Eurovision: when music becomes political

Eurovision is coming on to a screen near you tomorrow and Saturday for the 52nd time. This show is older than the European Union by two years and has changed just as much. In the beginning in Lugano, Switzerland, it had just fourteen participants. The UK should have made it fifteen, but the BBC was unusually late in its application. The winner was announced without the long scoring system: just read out by the chairman of the jury, Mr Rolf Liebermann. Everyone else was second and the ranking has never been revealed. The year after in the Großer Sendesaal des Hessischen Rundfunks in Frankfurt, juries sat in sealed-off rooms without knowledge of the way others had voted or how the audience had received the song and decided the winner by long-distance (in those days!) telephone call. The scoreboards were changed by hand, using number cards hanging on hooks. The winner was the Dutch song, "Net Als Toen", by Corry Brokken.

The quality of the songs was not particularly high and the event was quite formal and dull, but just as today, not all the winning songs went on to be famous melodies. In 1958 in Hilversum's AVRO studios, a young man called Domenico Medugno sang "Nel blu dipinto di blu", these days known as "Volare", but he came third. He embarrassingly had to sing it twice, once more at the end of the presentations, because some countries had lost transmission during his performance. The winner was André Claveau from France, with a song called "Dors mon amour". "Volare" went on to be copied by many after, including the Gypsy Kings, Frank Zappa, Louis Armstrong, David Bowie and Dean Martin. Until he moved to Italy, the Arsenal supporters used to serenade Patrick Vieira with the melody: "Vieira, oh-oh, Vieira, woh-oh-oh-oh, he comes from Senegal, he plays for Arsenal!"

However, Medugno won an award at the first Grammys and the song's popularity still endured in 2005 when at the 50th anniversary party in Copenhagen, it was voted second favourite entry of all time, but in some ways first, because everyone knew anyway which song was going to win. André Claveau has not been heard of much outside of his native land since. Medugno can be described as the first Eurovision star. Nobody would have his impact until the late 60s, when France Gall (Luxembourg, 1965), Sandie Shaw (UK, 1967) and Lulu (UK, 1969) represented their countries. In 1969, Lulu came joint first with the representatives of Spain, the Netherlands and France. After that, the rules were changed to prevent it ever happening again. The winners, incidentally, had 18 points each, which today would guarantee you a bottom-10 finish.

The seventies brought with them first wins for Ireland with Dana's "All Kinds Of Everything" and the Greek Vicky Leandros, singing for Luxembourg in Edinburgh. Ms Leandros was another international star, although she had been famous even before through Eurovision, coming fourth in 1967 and made shows in Germany, the UK and even in North America. She also made a commercial success of her song, "Après Toi" or "Come What May", selling in a total of seven languages, netting her the accolade of best-selling singer of that year. It was in 1974 in Brighton that Eurovision metamorphosed from a prestigious, yet formal, music competition into a cult show with worldwide following. The band was Abba and the song was "Waterloo". It took the world by storm and made Abba instant heroes. However, Abba's endurance is the one thing which keeps Eurovision going: the contestants' hope that they could follow the same path taken by Benny, Agnetha, Anni-Frid and Björn.

They are the sixth best-selling artists of all time after Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson and have reportedly sold more than 350 million records. Even I have a CD somewhere!

Teach-In ("Ding-a-Dong") and Brotherhood of Man ("Save All Your Kisses For Me") followed them to victory in the two years after, in some ways riding on the fame Abba had brought to the competition. After then it was another few years until another Eurovision great was discovered: Johnny Logan. The Irish crooner was actually born near Melbourne, Australia, but moved to the Republic when he was only three. His father was a famous singer, who had performed in the White House in front of three US Presidents. Johnny Logan won the competition twice as a singer and once as a composer, earning him the title "Mister Eurovision". He was also a panel member for VRT in the 2006 Belgian national selection. He disagreed with the others' choice to represent Belgium and he was proved right, when Kate Ryan, Belgium's entry, although tipped for success, didn't even make the final.

The 1980s also saw other well-known flashes-in-the-pan, like Bucks Fizz (UK, "Making Your Mind Up") and Sandra Kim (Belgium, "J'aime La Vie") but Eurovision's greatest product of that decade won in 1988, a year after Logan's second triumph, with "Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi". Céline Dion was born in Francophone Canada and rose to become one of the world's leading song artists. She has sung at Olympic closing ceremonies, made the music for the Oscar-winning film Titanic, and has a sell-out show in Las Vegas. She used her fame to speak out on issues close to her heart, and is or has been involved with Cystic Fibrosis charities and World Children's Day. Her friend Elton John filled in for her in Las Vegas when she went on sabbatical. Now that's quite a replacement!

The 1990s was the Irish decade. It started with Italian Toto's anthemic "Insieme: 1992" and finished with Sweden's Charlotte Nilsson with "Take Me To Your Heaven". However, in-between, Linda Martin, Niamh Kavanagh, Paul Harrington & Charlie McGettigan and Eimear Quinn won in 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1996 respectively to make four Irish wins in five years, interrupted by Secret Garden's Neo-Classical "Nocturne" from Norway, and even then one of the musicians was Irish. This was the decade which saw the number of participants grow inexorably. In 1992 a united Yugoslavia appeared for the final time. The year after Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia and Slovenia all entered separately. It was also the year of the first preliminary competition where some new members competed to make it to the final. In fact, it was these three countries which won the preliminaries. 1993 also provided Eurovision with its smallest-ever location: Millstreet in Ireland. A rich country gentleman offered RTÉ the use of his farm for the competition, as it would save the broadcaster millions - winning for the second time meant hosting costs would harm the broadcaster's programming quality for a whole year. After the fourth win, RTÉ was even offered Belfast as a venue in the UK with the costs picked up by the BBC. It took place in Dublin anyway, but RTÉ took no chances and made sure their song was a no-hoper.

The nineties was a very good decade for Eurovision, in terms of the event's proliferation but also the records it broke, the cultures it modernised and the milestones it surpassed:
Katrina and the Waves made history in 1997 with the record points score of 227, singing "Love Shine A Light", probably the finest performance of recent years, and the following year in Birmingham in front of a record crowd Dana International won for Israel with "Viva La Diva", the first transsexual to enter the competition, once and for all labelling the show as an extravaganza of kitsch. Riverdance brought folk dance to new heights, bringing tradition and popular culture together. 1999 saw the dropping of the national language rule (in my opinion a fatal mistake) but the boldest move was the introduction of televoting.

Televoting has had mixed results. On one hand it takes the emphasis away from juries and gives ordinary people a democratic choice, but on the other it has made a mockery of the political and demographic issues of Europe. You can guarantee that Germany will always give 12 points to Turkey, that the ex-Yugoslavs will scratch each others' backs and Russia will receive near-maximums from the Baltic states, Ukraine and Belarus, where they have large Russian communities. The result is that countries whose songs may have been excellent quality but have few or no alliances of expatriate groups in Europe have no chance of scoring high. Poland, for example, has had some excellent entries over the last few years but has consistently been left behind.

Another side-effect has been the need for a semi-final due to the high amount of countries participating: 37 last year in Athens, Greece. The countries receiving the fewest votes the year before have to enter a preliminary sing-off on the Thursday before the main event, except for the EBU's main sponsor countries, the Big Four (France, Spain, the UK and Germany), who get an automatic pass to the final night. The main problem with this is that the Thursday night singers get to perform, giving them an advantage on the Saturday, as their acts will have already been heard once. Most recent winners have come out of the Thursday night semi-final. The other result of this is that 1998 is likely to be the last time a Big Four country wins until the rules are changed, because despite their patronage being the main reason the festival continues, the public resentment of their participation only on the last night has caused votes to decline. In 2005 all Big Four countries found themselves at the bottom.

One thing I would add to this though is that no matter how much political and tactical voting goes on, the best song has always triumphed, and the new millennium in Stockholm assured us of that: The Olsen Brothers, two middle-aged showmen from Denmark, sang "Fly On The Wings Of Love" to assure us of a new-record crowd in the Parken Stadium in Copenhagen in 2001. Faith was briefly restored that the song, not the act, was the most important element to the show. Although I have to say it was just a break in the trend. Since then, the acts have tended to be just as important to the success of the song.

But folk music and dance has had a great effect on it too. Serbia & Montenegro's entry "Sane Moje" came second in 2004, a haunting folk ballad with a powerful anthem. But the winner that year was Ukraine's warrior princess, Ruslana, with her "Wild Dances", based on her own experiences of Ukrainian folk song and dance. Folk has played the greatest part in recent Eurovision contests, from the initiators, Riverdance, who were only the intermezzo but went on to greater success than most winners, to Urban Trad's second-placed "Sanomi" in 2003, to Elena Paparizou's winning Greek dance instrumental in 2005, to the grandmother of the Moldovan singer banging a drum, also in 2005. Folk music plays a subliminally important part in the hearts and minds of Europeans - seen popularly as outdated, viewers consistently vote for that genre even though they don't realise.

However, 2006 saw a sea-change in the contest, when Finland's first victory came in the form of Lordi's spectacular freak-show "Hard Rock Hallelujah", which won with 292 points, another new record. I was delighted at Lordi's win, as although I don't really like metal, that song brought hard rock to the people. Usually the stage for love songs and colourful kitsch, Eurovision became universal. Lordi has opened up the competition to all kinds of music potential and this year's entries are proof of that. Germany's Roger Cicero's catchy blues number and Latvia's Italian serenade should prove that the endurance of Eurovision will live on through its ever-adapting variety.

New firsts for this year: the Czech Republic and Georgia are joining in, and Montenegro and Serbia have entered independently since their separation.

However, despite the new styles and pioneering performance of Lordi, I believe folk will win once again on the night - look out for Ukraine's catchy earworm "Dancing Lasha Tumbai", a mix of ultra-modern electronic sound and deep-rooted folk with the added Euro-glamour provided by the singer, Verka Serduchka, a... well what can I say? Man dressed in a shiny costume! Serbia's Marija Šerifovic has a powerful ballad with folk traces called "Molitva", and Ireland's Dervish, singing "They Can't Stop The Spring" also have good chances.

However, after all that, I have a funny feeling that Eurovision is once again going to Kiev next year...