Eurovision 1978
Date: 22 April 1978
Venue: Palais des congrès, paris
Winning country: Israel (1st win)
Winning entry: Izhar Cohen and Alphabeta, “A-Ba-Ni-Bi”*
*or as Télévision Française bewilderingly put it, “Ah Bah Nee Bee”.
The day is 18 May 2019, and the Eurovision Song Contest is being held in Israel for the third time. The voting is drawing to a close, and the last country to present its jury votes is, as per protocol these past couple of contests, the host country itself. The feed switches down to the green room, where a curly haired man wearing way too much white is grinning into the camera. It’s Izhar Cohen, and the crowd in the Expo Tel Aviv roars its approval upon seeing him onscreen.
He takes a moment to let the applause sink in. It’s his moment, after all. “I’m so heppy that you all came to Israel,” he says. “I’m so heppy that the Eurovision became so big and pupular, like in the Golden Age of the Seventies!” He beams. The crowd, realising that a response is demanded, dutifully cheer him again. Although people think of ABBA, ONJ and Dschinghis Khan (or even “L’Oiseau et l’Enfant”) when confronted with “Eurovision’s Golden Age”, clearly he is thinking about his own winning entry, “A-Ba-Ni-Bi”, and imagining it to be one of the greatest songs the Contest ever produced in the 70s. And why shouldn’t he? He’s right.
For almost as long as Israel has been part of the Eurovision Song Contest, it has engendered controversy. There is the subject of its distance: can a country squarely in the Middle East really be considered European? And talking of the Middle East, there is the… erm, thorny subject of its relationships with neighbours; should a country and a regime which has been the cause of so much pain even be allowed to participate in a song contest so dedicated to peace? This is a very complex question, and obviously I’m not the best person to offer an answer — but let us consider it over the (spoiler alert) four pieces that engage with an Israeli win.
But to do that, we need to start with the basics — and in the Eurovision Song Contest, that’s the songs themselves. And of the four Israeli winers in this series, one can’t get any more “basic” than “A-Ba-Ni-Bi”, easily the song with the least baggage/context to consider. There are no uplifting calls for peace, no gender dynamics at work: this is very simply a pop song that exists to delight television audiences. And Izhar Cohen certainly doesn’t seem to imbue his song with hidden meanings: in interview after interview, he has talked of how “a-ba-ni-bi” doesn’t even mean anything, how it merely builds on a children’s language game. It’s a silly song crossed with literal nonsense — the very stuff of Eurovision.
And pop songs were what Israel were good at. I’ve alluded to this in a previous piece, but in the first two decades of their participation, Israel was an absolute wizard at the ESC. Their hit rate was astonishingly high, and so too were their results; they had a whole spate of top-10 results during the 1980s. Even the slip-ups were astonishingly good: I seem to be one of the few people online who dislike their 1981 entry “Halayla”, but even I can’t deny that it’s got a certain charm and flair to its presentation and craft. But what is interesting is that most of these hits had a double meaning to them: their debut entry was an obvious allusion to the need for a Jewish homeland, the next one talked about the two-state solution, and so on and so forth. So these songs weren’t just songs; they were explicit statements that asserted the Israeli cause, an important element of the nation’s soft power.
But soft power is much harder to project at the Contest when the song concerned is not a profound work of art. The first words from Izhar Cohen are not a rumination on Jewish unity, but something much more inane: “when we were children, we loved in secret/ Who were we nice to? Only uncles and aunts”. Unless you somehow read these lyrics as a screed on the need to indoctrinate children with the Hebrew language, this is hardly the best example with which to showcase your beautiful culture. And neither does it sound particularly Israeli: with the electric guitars and the synths, the sound it conjures vaguely gestures towards the Levantine, but honestly I’d just as easily have pegged this as the Turkish or Greek entry instead. Otherwise, it seems very much like your average pop song, and many people online have treated it accordingly — “A-Ba-Ni-Bi” rarely makes its way into the higher echelons of Paris 1978 rankings. It isn’t meant to be a game changer, and few people have thought of it otherwise.
Nonetheless, I think “A-Ba-Ni-Bi” is a song that DOES have soft power, and it’s demonstrated by the very fact of the song’s success at Eurovision. Its very normality, its inability to raise eyebrows, is the very thing that shows just how well Israel was playing the ESC game. Let’s start with the composer, the brains behind the song: Nurit Hirsh had written Israel’s first entry back in 1973, the one with the yearning for the Promised Land; back then not only was she prominently credited as the writer of the song, but she’d also become one of the first women to conduct the Eurovision orchestra (and yes, it truly was a delight to see someone ascend the conductor’s podium in something other than a tuxedo). But what makes Hirsh’s work stand out is its flexibility: “Ey Sham” and “A-Ba-Ni-Bi” could not sound more distinct from one another — the former sounds very much like a chanson, unflinching and emotional, while the latter is much closer to a pop song in energy — yet they’re both memorable in their own way, and have hooks that keep you humming for days afterward.
It is this flexibility that not only allows Israel to fit in seamlessly with contemporary trends at the ESC, but even allows them to stand out as the face of progress and diversity — there was noticeably more focus on Nurit Hirsh than what your average conductor or composer might have gotten. And this, obviously, was not an approach geared towards their conservative neighbours: it’s well-known in ESC circles that Jordanian television infamously cut transmission when it became apparent that they would have to recognise the very existence of the winning nation. Instead, Hirsh’s competence and presence at the Contest is a message to the West: here we are, all of us speak your language. Let us in.
But it’s not just in its composer that “A-Ba-Ni-Bi” breaks new ground: the song’s performance, too, is ample proof of Israel’s ability to adapt itself to Eurovision. There had been dance breaks since the earliest days of the Contest, but they all felt like they were either an extension of the song (as in the first ever ESC example, which was slotted into the middle of a song about dancing) or an extension of the singer’s personalities (as in the Luxembourgish entry right before this one, whose artists famously affirmed their ability to boogie). The dance break of “A-Ba-Ni-Bi”, however, is its own thing: it’s not an excuse for the artists to show off their dance moves, yet neither does it feel like it’s an integral part of the song — rather, it feels more like Izhar Cohen and Alphabeta spontaneously choosing right then and there to have a good time onstage, and you get the feeling that their whoops and whistles are genuine elation, not just an act for the cameras. Eurovision as a playground, dance as an outlet of fun: well-trodden ground, but it was Israel who perfected it; the EBU itself picked it to lead off a montage of dance breaks back in 2015.
But I think the biggest indication of Israel belonging at Eurovision lies in the very fact that they managed to convince the judges to love an Israeli pop song. This was not the easy task it looked like in 1978 — beyond the issue of getting everyone to warm to Hebrew, there was the whole issue of getting people to like Israel in the first place; sure there were lots of strident Zionists around (and still are, as this year’s Contest amply proved) but that didn’t automatically translate into success — twice in the last three years they’d finished in the bottom half, despite having some rather good songs on offer. The nonsensicality of the fundamental gimmick may have actually helped their fortunes: sneer all you like at it, but “a-ba-ni-bi o-bo-he-bev” just isn’t something that leaves your brain easily; that central motif is just that good.
The song doesn’t flag outside of the chorus, either: all three verses are stunning exemplars of pop perfection. As discussed before, Ehud Manor’s lyrics aren’t exactly the height of sophistication, but they wash over the lines with infinite ease, bending so well to the melody that it loops back round to being a perfect paean to love itself. And then there’s Hirsh’s orchestrations: it won’t be long before the orchestra starts its descent into superfluity in Eurovision, but in “A-Ba-Ni-Bi” it weds itself perfectly to Israeli pop — witness the swirling string flourish that greets the end of every line, or the brass double tap that greets “I dream and wake with three words in my head/ And what is the world? Those three words”. (I try not to reference the studio versions, much less the translated studio versions, but whoever turned those lines into “I wanna say the words of yesterday/ I wanna love you in that same old way” absolutely knew what they were doing.)
The biggest selling point of “A-Ba-Ni-Bi”, though, is Izhar Cohen himself, oozing charisma and enthusiasm in his performance. Most winners we’ve seen so far have elected to just stand where they are and let their faces do the talking; a few of them have gone the other way and jerked their arms and legs with strained jollity onstage. But Cohen is the first winner who has genuine rockstar vibes: his focus, like many before him, may be more directed to the live audience than the viewers at home, yet even there we see a difference in how he sings to them rather than at them — he points at the audience, extends a hand out to them as he sings. He puts his hand on his heart when he intones “love is good to me”, and acknowledges it with a slight nod. He sways in time to the music, no doubt mirroring his audience’s swaying. He smiles, and smiles, and never stops smiling. He might be the first winner we’ve had to actually enjoy singing his song. All this makes for a performance that’s hard to take your eyes off — which is good, because a song this propulsive needs a performer like him.
Put all of these elements together, and the conclusion is inevitable: “A-Ba-Ni-Bi” is the ultimate proof that Israel deserves to be at Eurovision. It has everything you would want in a ESC entry: excellent words and music, a charming performer, and a performance that gets everyone on their feet. It even appeals to Eurovision fans of the future: innovations like dance breaks, nonsensical yet memorable lyrics and a slight dash of regional colour. It might not have as much of a legacy as later Israeli entries might have, but as a pop song its immediate impact is undeniable, and that is enough of a case at the ESC — the ease with which it won the 1978 Contest, over several more well-known and showy contestants, is a testament to its excellence. On the question of music, then, there is no doubt that Israel passes, and with flying colours too.
On the question of politics, however, Israel’s participation is a little trickier to parse. But we’ll save that whole can of worms for next time…
Rating: 9/10
Best song
As mentioned before, Jordanian television was not pleased that they would have to actually acknowledge their hostile neighbour to the West, so they cut the broadcast, showed a vase of flowers in place of the results, and announced the following morning that the second-placed Belgian entry had won instead. Belgium is not a country I rank highly when it comes to Eurovision, but “L’amour ça fait chanter la vie” surprised me with how stirring it felt: it starts off rather slow, but the moment Jean Vallée gets up from his piano is the moment the song begins to take flight — a good effort from a country I don’t normally associate with excellence at the ESC (thus far). Third place went to France, who decided that they didn’t like this pop music lark after all and just sent yet another generic ballad with a snooty singer, this time entitled “Il y aura toujours des violons”. I have nothing more to say about it.
France and Belgium actually set the tone for much of this Contest, which despite a couple of powerful performances is a hodgepodge of ponderous balladry and ooky pop songs. I watched this Contest at one o’clock on a Saturday night, so fatigue may have played a part, but I was profoundly bored throughout most of it: what was this song again? Why is this man so indecisive with his suspenders? Why has the UK become so bad at this? Not till the appearance of Denmark did I find myself invested; “Boom Boom” by Mabel may be a throwback to the 1960s, but it’s refreshing to hear joy being spelt out so honestly, so raucously, that it’s hard for me to ignore its power — so second place it is. My third place, fittingly, came three songs later: Austria’s Springtime brought out their little character study “Mrs Caroline Robinson”, a song about… well, I’m not sure, actually, but the reference to The Graduate probably means something (“Mrs Caroline Robinson is a sensation for men/ sex appeal instead of broomsticks” …). But all these are really just side-dishes to the delectable main course that is “A-Ba-Ni-Bi”, which really stands unparalleled even after all these years. Like I said up there, Israel is always a force to reckon with when it comes to pop music.
| PLACE | ACTUAL RESULTS | MY PICKS |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Israel, “A-Ba-Ni-Bi” | Israel, “A-Ba-Ni-Bi” |
| 2nd | Belgium, “L’amour ça fait chanter la vie” | Denmark, “Boom Boom“ |
| 3rd | France, “Il y aura toujours des violons“ | Austria, “Mrs Caroline Robinson“ |
Next time
… an Israeli hymn to peace? Well, this’ll be uncontroversial.
Inkpot Shuffles in the Twilight 
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