ESC The Hague 1976 — “Save Your Kisses for Me”

Eurovision 1976

full show

Date: 3 April 1976
Venue: Nederlands Congresgebouw, The Hague
Winning country: United Kingdom (3^rd win)
Winning entry: Brotherhood of Man, “Save Your Kisses for Me”

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Quite a few adjectives have been used to describe the Eurovision Song Contest. Quite a few of those are true. “Tacky”. “Extravagant”. “A place where gender neutralisation is encouraged”, as the president of a former participating country recently put it. All of these can be levied against (or perhaps for) the ESC, and you could make a decent case for each one of them, too.

“Whimsical” is, I feel, another one — but it’s a little context-specific. Except for a few memorable examples, few Eurovision entries in the 21^st century can be said to be whimsical; instead, most entries pursue a maximalist aesthetic, deploying extreme close-ups and jets of fire and endless sultry dance-breaks in a quest to grab the attention of the audience. This is not to say that there aren’t any artists trying to be cutesy these days: in 2016, Austria sent a fresh-faced ingenue who tripped through a field of psychedelic CGI flowers while warbling in French, while the German representative decided to wear some actual flowers in her hair. But these artists did not win over the audience, who merely shrugged and left them to languish at the bottom of the scoreboard. Whimsicality is just something that doesn’t fit with the ESC these days.

There was a time, however, when whimsicality and quaintness seemed to be exactly what Europe was looking for. We’ve already seen a couple of winners that made use of the cutesy factor: sometimes they were good, and other times they… weren’t. (It wasn’t just an Anglophone thing either: there are loads of examples in other languages.) But none of those winners, I think, were ever as quirky as Brotherhood of Man.

Has there ever been another Eurovision winner more designed for whimsy than “Save Your Kisses for Me”? This song isn’t just a case of the singer(s) inadvertently looking cute in a couple of shots — no, everything in this song feels like a deliberate attempt to generate as many “awwwws” as possible. During the entirety of their three minutes onstage, the four singers in Brotherhood of Man act more like children’s presenters than a pop group: whether it’s the flashy grins they give the camera, or the absurdly literal and simplistic dance moves (example: them waving during the words “with your cute little wave”), it all feels like an attempt to get the five-year-olds at home to join along. Of course, Brotherhood of Man had always been that type of band: their very first hit had been sung by the guy who did “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)”, and “Save Your Kisses for Me” was neither the first nor the last time they would go cutesy. At the same time, Eurovision had built up some reputation as a ground for tweeness; the two ideals met, and juries ended up going for BOM’s MOR music in 1976.

But there’s a difference between unaffected cutesiness and deliberately aiming for it, and in choosing the latter, Brotherhood of Man at times veer perilously close to saccharine territory. Lead singer Martin Lee is charming enough that he manages some ambiguity in his winks and his natural smile — in fact, without him at the helm this song’s central conceit would have been much more obvious — but the others dial up the kiddie energy up to eleven; Sandra Stevens in particular looks like the spitting image of Lulu from seven years ago, and the other two aren’t that far off in their muggings-for-the-camera either. I consider my tolerance for cheese to be much higher than most people, yet I couldn’t help but grimace at some of the things in the group’s performance. (Why the hell do they wave so much?)

At times it even feels like your attention is being drawn specifically to the song’s whimsical elements. Witness the moment when we reach the outro and they drop its final twist: “won’t you save them for me/ Even though you’re only three?” This is justifiably the most infamous twist in the Contest’s 68-year history, Jacqueline Boyer be damned, yet I think how they follow up on that is also interesting: they arc their eyebrows at the audience as if to say “aren’t we clever?” while the orchestra plays what is obviously a wah-wah in all but name, yet at the same time there’s also a trace of embarrassment in the way they look away from the audience and how they cross their arms and legs — it’s like they know how silly this all is, and are already guarding themselves against possible criticism.

Indeed, when I first came across “Save Your Kisses for Me” — I would have been about fourteen or fifteen at the time — I thought it was the most ingenious thing in the world. There were so many clues along the way, but they had hidden them so well in plain sight that one could only marvel at their finesse. (This should give you an idea about my poor conception of subtlety at the time.) Revisiting the song for this blog series, I wonder how I didn’t pick up on the many clues that were being shoved in my face, even as, to my surprise, I still find them somewhat clever: the toy-soldier tune, Martin Lee’s slightly patronising tone, his references to being a working parent (“I’ve got to work each day, and that’s why I go away”). But Europe, I suppose, must have been similarly caught out in 1976.

The question then is, as it always has been: why did this win? Why did this song, with its naked appeal to cutesiness, triumph over so many others? It would be wrong to suggest that it was just what everyone wanted; the Monegasque entry spouted the usual philosophical poetry, and a respectable portion of the jury still gave it third place. But it does feel important that this was both the safest and most relatable song on offer, the song which had the broadest appeal. Not everyone could relate to the tales of a forlorn clown, or the effect of pollution on the Parthenon, or whatever the hell it was that the Norwegian artist was singing about. But they COULD relate to the pain of a working parent, leaving home to start another weekday, and having to say goodbye to their children — doubly so, now that women were also beginning to enter the workplace en masse. The fact that Brotherhood of Man actively looked and sounded like parents consoling their distraught kids was no doubt an important bonus. And it worked: to this day, it still holds the record for highest percentage of possible score attained in the Contest.

In a sense it’s interesting to note how Eurovision, once a reliable place for Europe to receive its dose of family values, later became a bastion of letting your freak flag fly. The winner of ESC 1976 seems a world away from the winner of ESC 2024: the former talks about the importance of coming home to your wife and kids, the latter is about transcending the gender binary. This is not to say that one song is better than the other because of the values they hold, but I think it does help to explain why the Contest shifted away from the whimsical and towards the overblown. The former, soothing and knowable though it was, could appear stultifying and self-important at times: try saying “I’ll be thinking of you in most everything I do” to your nineteen-year-old (or even nine-year-old) child and see where that gets you. As time went on and Eurovision broadened its viewership, the people who voted for its winners began to find that whimsy was not something they could relate to any longer, and so cutesy, family-oriented entrants like Brotherhood of Man fell out of fashion, to be replaced by more anguished, existential songs about oneself.

Is it any great loss? I don’t think so; much as I recall my childhood self loving this song, I can’t summon the same amount of affection these days for such sentimental slop as “Save Your Kisses for Me”. But it is a very intriguing window into the past, one where people wanted nothing more than to be soothed by their annual spring music show. The organisers of the ESC like to state that their programme is a family-oriented programme; here in the whimsy of the 1976 Contest, we find evidence of a time when that was really the case.

Rating: 5/10

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Best song

As you’ve probably noticed, the British didn’t get second place, which meant France could swoop in and grab it instead. But good God, did they deserve that excellent placing: previously preoccupied with erudite but soporific ballads, the French ripped up their script for 1976 and sent — miracle of miracles! — a frothy pop song, and the fact that Catherine Ferry’s “Un, deux, trois” is an absolute BOP shows just how deadly France can be at music when they actually put their mind to it; if only they’d raised themselves out of this stupor sooner! Third place went to the Monegasque entry mentioned above, “Toi, la musique et moi” — a rather odd attempt to marry the American sensibilities of funk and disco with traditional French chansons. It’s a bit awkward at points, but Mary Christy does give a very energetic performance, so points for that.

This year is a rather average year for me: there are songs I like very much, and there are also songs which just leave me screaming “WTF” at the screen. (The Norwegian and Finnish entries this year are alarmingly similar to the glut of eccentricities that would plague/populate the Contest in the 2000s.) Amongst the former group is Israel, who gave us the bouncy, flirty “Emor shalom”; the singers, the unwieldly-named Shokolad, Menta, Mastik are really good performers of a really bewitching tune, so third place it is. One place up is Italy’s “We’ll Live It All Again”, the closest thing to a guilty pleasure I have: it is obvious that Romina Power can’t sing for toffee, but I’ll be damned if she doesn’t sell her contentment with husband Al Bano — they have such a warm, fuzzy dynamic that it’s impossible to not root for them. Honestly, I thought about giving them the crown… but no, France practically reinvented themselves this year to give us a stunning tune, and that deserves to be rewarded. Catherine Ferry’s song is one that delicately balances wisdom with enthusiasm, one that opens itself up to wonder and joy (“enchantez-moi, magiciens!”) — you just can’t help but fall in love with it. Note to Brotherhood of Man: THIS is how you do whimsy in Eurovision right.

PLACE	ACTUAL RESULTS	MY PICKS
1st	United Kingdom, “Save Your Kisses for Me”	France, “Un, deux, trois”
2nd	France, “Un, deux, trois”	Italy, “We’ll Live It All Again“
3rd	Monaco, “Toi, la musique et moi“	Israel, “Emor Shalom“

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Next time

France returns to form, but I’ll allow it just this once.