1963

An unprepossessing year.

01 United Kingdom
B: I want to scorn these lyrics but I don’t have the heart.
A: I love the way the strings seem to conduct the backing vocals in the chorus. The backing vocals themselves are the very old-fashioned kind you never hear any more, echoey and earnest. Oddly, with its gentle pace and rather repetitive nature, this seems like a precursor to Hold Onto Our Love.
V: Mr Cleghorn returns, all teeth once again, with another fourth place after Ring-a-Ding Girl. The studio-bound live recording makes it all seem very stagey. You can just see the words ‘The End’ appearing in a heart-shaped space after the cute little peck on the cheek.

02 The Netherlands
B: ‘Sprookje’ and ‘herderinnetje’ are the perfect kind of words for this song.
A: Enchanting opening. Despite (or perhaps because of) the slightly unusual combination of instruments here and there, it’s yet another entry from the Netherlands that makes me think the Dutch have a real knack for writing songs where everything fits together just as it should.
V: Ms Palmen’s all teeth, too. Lovely direction at the beginning of the live version with the music box and our Annie doing a little turn.

03 Germany
B: “’ne Chance hat bei mir allein ein Kavalier” – amen to that, honey!
A: I keep expecting Liza Minnelli to burst in here at any moment with “life is a cabaret old chum, life is a cabareeeeeet!”. It has a slightly OTT quality to it that would see it going down well with a wider Slavic audience, I suspect, even if Yugoslavia left it pointless. Love the tuba or whatever it is providing the pump-pump accompaniment.
V: Unless the TV image gives us a distorted picture, Ms Brühl has one of the narrowest waists in existence. She’s certainly comfortable in front of the camera, with a twinkle in her eye that says she’d really rather Marcel didn’t take his time at all.

04 Austria
B: Surprisingly jaunty flow to “And if tomorrow sorrow should come our way”.
A: This has a fantastic vocal arrangement, confounding your expectations at every turn. Strikes me as being the first entry that screams 1963, too, although obviously I have no idea. Wonderful rich composition, with a great ending.
V: Carmela Corren looks remarkably cheerful for someone who ends her song on “Doch wenn’s kein Wunder gibt, bleib’ ich allein”. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding it. Interesting the things you learn from these live broadcasts though: she’s an Israeli who was discovered by Ed Sullivan while she was doing her military service! She piles it on a bit thick for TV, rather like her hair. I love the addition of the English bit, which shows they were doing it for years.

05 Norway
B: “Vår vinter er fjern, men vår sommer er nær / I morgensolens strålende skjær” is nice.
A: Allegedly thought to be so bad it was never recorded, which might explain why the studio version I have clearly does not feature Ms Thallaug on vocals. But I adore the intimacy of it: the piano almost seems improvised.
V: Live it might [as well] be a completely different song. Still charming, if not nearly as engaging given the orchestral makeover.

06 Italy
B: “Io li dedico a chi per prima dirà di sì” is very honest.
A: If they’d started making The Muppets about 10 years earlier, and in Cinecittà, I’m sure Kermit would have been singing this song alongside Emilio, much to Miss Piggy’s chagrin. It almost sounds ahead of its time in a way. The comedy approach takes away from the meaningfulness of the lyrics somewhat.
V: Mr Pericoli struts his stuff like many an Italian man: very much a playboy in his own head. Amazing the calibre of performer the contest still attracted in these days though. Great direction again.

07 Finland
B: “Kun pois sä lähdit niin viel’ sydämessään laulusi soi / Kenties sama laulu onnen uuden toiselle toi” is something I can associate with.
A: This is a lovely if fairly run-of-the-mill number in a Technicolor ladies’ take on stiff upper-lipedness. The hint of melodrama in the final bar is a nice touch, albeit left a little too late after she’s done her la-las like she’s forgotten the words.
V: Laila Halme has a very off-with-the-pixies look about her, and for a television presenter she seems slightly ill at ease in the studio. (Apropos of nothing, I see Finnish genes haven’t changed in a generation-and-a-half.) She also has a voice that disguises the excesses of Finnish very effectively.

08 Denmark
B: Some odd-looking lyrics here, even for Danish. I’m taken with the middle bit full of “kom igen” and not much else.
A: It’s cleverly understated, but still perfectly suited to the dance floor. Terrific arrangement with a fantastic ending.
V: Live it’s very personable from the word go. Love the visual effects!

09 Yugoslavia
B: I wonder whether the whole thing’s a metaphor, or childhood nostalgia, or perhaps both? “Without you, seagulls dies” is not a line you hear terribly often in songs.
A: More spoken outpourings from the Yugoslavians here. The music and lyrics go very much hand in hand. It’s impressively done. Mr Vukov has a voice that injects the right sense of nostalgia and longing into it.
V: The lovely Vice would end 11th with 3 points, only to come back two years later and end 12th with 2 points, so I guess this was a victory of sorts. How cute he looks in Television Centre, so serious and so nervous, swallowing all the time. He seems to have a very small mouth for a voice that big to come out of.

10 Switzerland
B: “Je n’ai pas su trouver les mots pour te garder / Mais je pense tout bas / T’en vas pas” sounds familiar.
A: They had a thing for presenting these tales of heartbroken debutants in a way that suggested they weren’t terribly upset at all, didn’t they. Having said that, there are some nifty touches to the vocal arrangement and composition here that hint at slightly more depth of feeling than superficially seems to be there.
V: Live, it helps that she seems stuck to the wall. Lovely voice. Austria and Switzerland both picked well in importing from Israel.

11 France
B: Personification of the wind is clearly common in songs of this era. This one shares similar themes to the Italian entry.
A: Sounds altogether ’70s to my ears.
V: Alain Barrière’s a bit of alright. I love the way he’s known as a ‘representative of modern youth’ in France. What a rebel! As with Norway, the orchestral treatment here sees the song lose much of the richness of the studio recording. But without doing all that much in either case that’s special, it’s really rather good.

12 Spain
B: Labelling someone ‘alguien que un millón de estrellas puso sobre el infinito’ is a bit of a back-handed compliment, isn’t it?
A: I can think of absolutely nothing to say about this song that wouldn’t be stating the obvious.
V: Terrible little moustache on José: it looks like it’s trying to outdo his eyebrows.

13 Sweden
B: Lots of seasons again in 1963, and more seagulls, albeit alive this time.
A: It’s only the luck of the draw, I know, and it would have been Norway under other circumstances, but it doesn’t help Sweden that pretty much everything it’s trying to achieve here has already been done by its neighbour. Having said that, I still find it rather nice, if a little too sedate for its own good. I like the oboe puttering along in the background like a flock of migrating geese.
V: Monica Zetterlund’s hair is interesting, and she looks vaguely like she’s brewing some mad scheme and will break out into a ‘mwa-ha-haaaaaar!’ mid-verse somewhere. The single close-up rather stretches things a bit.

14 Belgium
B: I see this had the same composer as September, Gouden Roos (whose name is Hans Flower!), but we’re treated to red roses this time. Lots of birds everywhere again, too. I agree with “Alleen ons hart verstaat die taal”.
A: Musically it’s all perfectly adequate, without having any personality whatsoever.
V: Jacques Raymond and his pipe-cleaner legs are not looking quite as attractive here as they would upon his return in 1971, although he has a lovely voice.

15 Monaco
B: “Et chaque fois, toujours on doit se l’avouer / L’amour s’en va, mais sans cesse, nous courons après”. Love it!
A: The composers very neatly weave things together here with a sense of inevitability.
V: Françoise Hardy looks suitably gaunt and vacuous for the ’60s, and for a song like this. Her delivery feels very jaded, and she looks completely bored by the whole thing, which I suppose is also appropriate, but it perhaps didn’t help much. Glad she gives a little smile at the end after delivering my favourite two lines (see above).

16 Luxembourg
B: Lovely poetry here in the French lyrics that doesn’t translate at all to the clumsy English version on Diggiloo. “À force de t’aimer, il faudra que tu m’aimes” makes a nice contrast to Monaco, with none of its amusing self-pity, although that perhaps renders it more delusional.
A: This is certainly more relentless than Monaco, and makes for a rousing end to the contest. Love the tiny little bit around the minute mark where the French horn comes to the fore for about 10 seconds.
V: Ms Mouskouri looks a bit like a blow-up doll with a black wig and spectacles. Live at the Beeb, she gives a professional if straightforward performance that really ratchets up towards the end.


And so to the points...

1 point goes to Finland

2 points go to the Netherlands

3 points go to Monaco

4 points go to Switzerland

5 points go to Yugoslavia

6 points go to Norway

7 points go to Luxembourg

8 points go to France

10 points go to Denmark

and finally...

12 points go to...


Austria!


The wooden spoon is awarded to Spain.