From humble origins to glamorous extravaganza. A history of the Eurovision Song Contest

Recognised for its glitz, glamor and eccentricity, the Eurovision Music Contest will entice tens of millions of viewers from throughout the globe when the grand remaining starts Saturday in Malmö, Sweden.    

But a present that has turn out to be compulsory annual viewing for lots of has a lot more humble beginnings as an endeavor to recover the wounds of article-Earth War II Europe, though also attaining the technological marvel of beaming are living television pics into countries across the Continent. 

“This was really an experiment in the nascent technological innovation of television,” historian Dean Vuletic informed NBC Information final month about the competitiveness, which was very first held in the picturesque Swiss city of Lugano in 1956 — as Tv set sets 1st grew to become a fixture in people’s households. 

“We never have the viewing figures for 1956, but Television set possession was not so prevalent then so they were likely not really substantial,” reported Vuletic, who has composed many textbooks on Eurovision. But he stated for broadcasters it was a exam to see “whether they could broadcast the same tv demonstrate at the exact same time across Europe and reside.”

Modeled after Italy’s well-known Sanremo New music Pageant, only seven nations took portion. But amongst the neatly coiffed performers who ended up accompanied by a reside orchestra had been contestants from former axis powers West Germany and Italy.

Because then, it has grown into a weeklong spectacle in which dozens of countries compete, together with two — Israel, which joined in 1973, and Australia, in 2015 — who aren’t even on the Continent.  

“It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but it is uniting in a way that number of other points are,” Amy Williamson, a teaching fellow in songs at Britain’s College of Southampton. 

Like it or dislike it, there is no denying that the level of competition has presented a springboard for some of the world’s very best-recognised artists and songs. 

Just two many years just after its inception, Domenico Modugno’s song “Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu,” also recognised as “Volare,” became a hit globally irrespective of only putting 3rd in the contest by itself. It stays 1 of the most commercially productive non-English music at any time. 

ABBA also went on to develop into a world-wide phenomenon immediately after they won the 1974 competitiveness with their song “Waterloo,” and though Celine Dion had obtained average achievement in her residence region of Canada, she gained worldwide recognition following she received the 1988 level of competition representing Switzerland with her music “Ne partez pas sans moi.” It was a equivalent story for legendary balladeer Julio Iglesias following he represented Spain in 1970.   

Having said that, it was not generally smooth sailing for the competition, which was dogged by controversies about its voting program, the high-quality of tunes and the price of web hosting a contest that right now operates into the tens of hundreds of thousands of bucks. 

So above the yrs, adjustments have been created to rules and structure of the contest. In 1999, the are living orchestra was ditched allowing performers to use a backing track and, the similar calendar year, a rule adjust that permitted performers to sing in any language was also reintroduced. Prior to that, aside from a short window in the 1970s, they had been only permitted to sing in their country’s official language.

Five yrs later on, semifinals ended up launched. Held in excess of two evenings prior to the final, they permit far more international locations to contend. 

While when the winners had been picked by qualified juries from each and every nation, phone voting has presented the European public a say considering the fact that 1997. They can now vote by cell phone or text message. Together with voters from the relaxation of the entire world, they can also use the contest’s internet site and application. 

The public vote and people from the juries are then transformed into points and awarded to the most common songs. The state with the most factors wins. 

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and separation of the former Yugoslavia that adopted, a whole lot extra nations began to contend, sharply raising the charge of web hosting the competitors. So host nations around the world commenced using larger arenas and searching for a lot more industrial sponsorship for the event. 

The entrants from the jap bloc also commenced to make the contest “more political,” Vuletic, the historian, stated, incorporating that “this expansion of Eurovision is performed out from the politics of European integration and the enlargement of the European Union to Central and Eastern Europe.”

In the early 2000s, he mentioned nations like Estonia and Latvia applied the contest as a “tool in their cultural diplomacy,” selling their Western credentials and investing substantial methods into their entries. 

When the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which operates the contest, has historically positioned it as a nonpolitical celebration, “politics is normally incredibly existing in the background, not minimum in conditions of the voting,” claimed Christopher Wiley, a senior lecturer in music at the U.K.’s College of Surrey.

In the initial contest in 1956, a Holocaust survivor represented West Germany, and each Greece and Turkey boycotted the contest immediately after Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974. The EBU banned Russia from the contest in 2022 after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.    

Some tunes experienced “been banned, or they have pulled out as a final result of criticism,” Williamson, of the College of Southampton, extra. “But in other yrs, when some of those people points are much more buried or metaphorical, they get away with it.” 

Some are more explicit. Two many years soon after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Ukrainian singer Djamala won with a music about the mass deportation of the Peninsula’s minority Muslim Tatar community underneath Stalin — a music that was not censored by the EBU.  

For the most portion, the contest is identified for its colorful and frequently campy performances, which Velutic claimed has led to it staying extended championed by the LGTBQ local community. That assisted to propel the Israeli transgender performer Dana International to a gain in 1998 and the bearded Austrian drag queen Conchita Wurst in 2014. This year’s contest capabilities two nonbinary performers, Switzerland’s Nemo and Ireland’s Bambie Thug. 

The contest “really only arrived to embrace this recognition in the late 1990s when Europe came to really advance gay rights and satisfaction by itself on its progression of the rights of sexual minorities,” Velutic explained. 

Today, he said it has pretty much turned into Europe’s most significant election. “In no other contest or no other celebration do you have so several individuals from so several international locations in Europe getting equipped to vote,” he stated. 

Williamson also pointed out that, in some areas of the Continent, cultural traditions have sprung up close to the contest, and it does dominate Television scores in quite a few nations around the world. Nordic nations like Sweden, Finland and Norway all experienced viewing shares of earlier mentioned 80% for Eurovision last 12 months, although in Iceland, it had 98.7% of the viewing share.      

“It receives set on in pubs and in bars, men and women have Eurovision parties at household. Usually men and women will get dressed up in crazy outfits to embrace the weirdness and the sort of more than-the-topness of the total function,” Williamson said. 

“There are not a lot of other factors that unite individuals pretty on that scale.”