Morten Thomassen from Norway decided to write about some of his memories of Eurovision and the Norwegian Eurovision selection. ESC Covers again will publish it after google translating it from Norwegian to English.

At the beginning of ESC’s history, there really wasn’t any rule about which language the song was to be performed in, it just became the case that you performed it in your own country’s language or, in cases where you have several official languages, one of them .

Someone had thrown in a few lines in another language and in 1963 Austria sang half their song in English and that had actually upset the Swedish delegation a bit.

But, in 1965 it was actually a Swedish artist, (these Swedes that is, they always have to try), Ingvar Wixell, who had the good idea to sing his song in a more international language than Swedish, namely English.

Then you obviously crossed a line and the following year the language rule was introduced that you had to sing in one of your national languages ​​and with the exception of the years 1973-1976 this applied, however it was introduced so late in 1977 that Belgium and Germany were allowed to to sing in English that year.

Back then, good advice was expensive and we received many contributions where the person who had written the song had obviously thought that even if most of Europe doesn’t understand what we’re singing about, the title should at least be of the international kind.

From Norway we sent songs with titles such as Casanova, Oliver, Adieu, Do Re Mi, Romeo, Mrs. Thompson, Duett, Nocturne and San Francisco and payment for such comprehensible titles ranged from first place to last place so how helpful it was can be debated I claim.

I can imagine that those who commented for the different countries were probably fond of songs with easy titles, I can imagine back in 1978 that many of them struggled to say “Det Blir Alltid Värre Framåt Natten”, the song Björn Skifs performed.

He actually really wanted to perform his song in English and had thought about making a small coup during the live broadcast and actually did it, but in the end he was a coward and he looked so bad that he forgot the lyrics so that the second sentence he only sings a few sounds and nothing that any Swedish or for that matter any other nationalities understand.

For a young ESC fan, these were songs where at least some of what was sung was understandably enjoyable, then you could sing some of the songs correctly and then the rest just sounded like the language you were singing.

If I have to choose a favorite among these songs with easy-to-understand titles, I fall on the contribution that came after our own contribution “Oliver” in 1979 and I’m talking here about the song “Colorado”, I think this is catchy and worth revisiting.

This was actually this lady’s third attempt at the competition, but all good things did not come in three so to speak, she debuted with a 4th place in 1972, went down to a 9th place in 1976 and then finished with a 12th. place in 1979.

Barbara Alexandra Reemer, as her real name is, unfortunately passed away far too early in 2017, and history says nothing about whether she ever made it to Colorado.

I started watching Eurovision in 1980, so I do not  really have many special memories of Eurovision 1979. I of course love DSCHINGISH KHAN by the group of the same name, as one of their members was from South Africa. I even attended the same high school as Louis Potgieter but my the time I arrived at high school, he had finished school and left for Germany. Also the entry for Denmark DISCO TANGO was the first ever vinyl single I got in Danish.