The year is 1955, the place Monaco. The whirl of the casinos, the racket of baccarat games is quiet. Behind closed doors, in what I imagine to be a room shrouded in cigar smoke, the director of the European Broadcasting Union, Marcel Bezençon, shares with his colleagues an idea. What if they broadcast a musical event simultaneously throughout Europe? In the decade after World War II and the start of the Cold War, countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain felt that they needed to foster and cement cross-cultural unity. Large scale television broadcasts, still nascent at the time, became the prime vehicle for this kind of transnational exchange. Inspired by the Sanremo Music Festival, a popular Italian song-contest, Bezençon proposed the nations of the EBU host a similar event that invited the member countries to enter their best musicians and compete for the title of best European song. By May of 1956, the first Eurovision Song Contest Grand Prix was held in Lugano, Switzerland, with the Swiss coming in first for the inaugural competition.
Eurovision is now the longest running television broadcast of any kind. It’s been around longer than the actual European Union, and in its 60-year history, it has been witness to a wide swath of musical and political history. Rises, falls, stagnation, and all manner of cultural moving and shaking has been refracted through the bizarro lens of Eurovision. The Portuguese entry in the 1974 contest, Paulo de Carvalho's "E Depois de Adeus" ("And After Goodbye"), is often cited as one of songs soundtracking the start of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution, which overthrew the Estado Novo regime. The fall of the Soviet Republic led to the inclusion and then dominance of the Eastern Bloc in the competition. Georgia’s barred 2009 entry, “We Don’t Wanna Put In,” was a disco-powered Putin satire that the competition found too overtly political, showing that the competition serves dual functions as a proudly silly musical event and a phantom litmus test for the European political situation.
For the most part, Eurovision winners don’t go on to giant pop careers. A couple standouts include ABBA, who won the 1974 contest, and Celine Dion—curiously competing for Switzerland and not her native (and ineligible) Canada—in 1988. More often than not, the winners are not even the most interesting entries. Eurovision has cultivated a reputation as a haven for the proudly outré, the zany, the unabashedly unexplainable. Watching Eurovision every May is like being dipped head first into a bubbling phantasmagoria. The proposition you sign up for is hours filled with Super Bowl halftime show levels of bombast, crossed with the most head-scratching of early American Idol performances. In the TV competitions seemingly inspired by Eurovision—Idol, the Got Talent and X Factor franchises, truly bizarre contestants don’t usually make it through to the finals. That’s because Eurovision has no qualms with presenting a panoply of WTF moments. In fact, the contest’s strange power derives from its wild eccentricity. And this year’s contest in Stockholm already looks like it’s going to be another madcap romp.
In honor of the festivities, which kick off tomorrow, here are 10 of the most wonderfully weird Eurovision performances over the years.
Peter, Sue & Marc — “Djambo Djambo” (Switzerland, 1976)
Peter, Sue & Marc was one of the most prolific early acts of Eurovision, not only representing Switzerland four times (1971, 1976, 1979, 1981) but singing in a different language on each of their entries (French, English, German, Italian). Their 1976 song, “Djambo Djambo,” was an earnest ballad dedicated to a washed-up clown named Djambo, who dreams of a return to big tent glory. Joining them for their performance in The Hague no less, is an actual sad clown playing a barrel organ. During the chorus, the clown companion has to awkwardly switch between organ and acoustic guitar. And close-ups of Sue and the clown are extremely uncomfortable. You’re waiting for someone to break out in laughter, maybe even total shock.
LT United — “We Are the Winners” (Lithuania, 2006)
What do you think would happen at your office holiday party if all your middle-age managers decided to quit their day jobs and start a boy band? They’d probably enter Eurovision for Lithuania. Just look at the members of LT United. Just watching them ham it up, you can practically smell the Brylcreem and Drakkar Noir emanating from your laptop screen.They implore the audience gathered in Athens, Greece to get off their asses and to vote for the true winners of Eurovision. Because after all, they “are here to represent truth.” The best dancer of the septet is Arnoldas Lukošius, a non-descript balding man who breaks out of his mild mannered shell to unleash some hellish dance moves. They cap off their rambunctious performance with a face-melting electric violin solo. Unsurprisingly they didn’t win the contest that year (placing sixth), but you can’t fault them for trying.
Scooch — “Flying the Flag (For You)” (England, 2007)
Once upon a time, flying seemed like the most glamorous of professions—worldly and debonair. It wasn’t the life of constant red-eyes and aisle seats and crying babies. It makes sense that the British pop group Scooch would want to sing about the glitz of cruising the skies—they’re just a few decades late to the party. The build-up to their performance at Eurovision is the stuff of legend. They appeared in a British competition hosted by the BBC, called Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up, a qualifier used to choose the entry the country would send to Helsinki that year. The show ended in acrimonious controversy when the presenters somehow accidently named two winners, Scooch and pop star Cyndi Almouzni. It was revealed Scooch won in the end, and their performance at Helsinki that year is hard to forget. Over projections of the Union Jack and goofy airplanes in motion, they sing their paean to the skies. Clunking one-liners like, “Flying high in Amsterdam/Why don't you catch us if you can” get funnier and funnier every time you hear the joke sink. They placed 22nd (out of 24 contestants), returning home a tad embarrassed, fading away after 2007.
Dschinghis Khan — “Dschinghis Khan” (Germany, 1979)
What exactly is the historical or even cultural connection between Genghis Khan and Germany? The Mongols did attempt invasions of Europe all throughout the 13th century, but for the most part, Germany was spared. More likely, this group of laughable West Germans chose to name their band and song “Dschinghis Khan” to celebrate a mystical and resolute heroism that had no bearing on the stark political situation back home. It looks like pure musical escapism. Inspired by the continuing popularity of disco in Europe, they conflated fun horns and swooping strings with totally inaccurate historical garb. One of the members is dressed as a caricature of the great Mongol warlord, and he romps around the stage with a lecherous look, seducing the female members of the band. A year after this performance, Dschinghis Khan were banned from entering the Soviet Union due to anti-communist concerns.
Lordi — “Hard Rock Hallelujah” (Finland, 2006)
The connections between metal and Scandinavia are numerous and complicated, by turns violent, political, religious, and colonial. If you want measured and thoughtful words on the tenuous balance, maybe look towards Pitchfork’s own Brandon Stosuy, who has written about the topic more comprehensively than most. But if you don’t want a rich dialectical understanding of metal and Scandinavia, you could watch Lordi’s performance for Eurovision 2006. Lordi, a gimmick shock-metal band from Finland, somehow was chosen to represent their country in Athens that year. In terms of lyrical content, the song is standard Christian metal fare. We’ve got discussions of the rapture (“The true believers/Thou shall be saved/Brothers and sisters keep strong in the faith/On the day of Rockoning”) and hosannas to the higher powers (“Rock 'n roll angels bring thyn hard rock hallelujah/In God's creation supernatural high!”). Now juxtapose those Christian messages with their scraggly demon costumes. Mr. Lordi, the frontman decked out in a Finnish-flag fedora, unveils leathery bat wings as the song reaches its pyro-loving finale. They’re not only the first Finnish act to win Eurovision, they’re the only “rock” band to ever win, too. Months later, 80,000 people gathered in Helsinki to sing “Hard Rock Hallelujah,” setting a Guinness World Record for karaoke singing.
Buranovskiye Babushki (The Grannies from Buranovo) — “Party For Everybody” (Russia, 2012)
The etymology of the word “babushka” dates back to only 1938, a bit of Russian slang connoting both a grandmother and the head covering those grandmas often wore. We all know and love babushkas in some sense. So to flex this inkling to its reasonable end, Russia sent in a crack crew of babushkas to deliver “Party for Everybody” at the 2012 competition in Azerbaijan. The song was sung in Udmurt, a language native to the Udmurt Republic, a region in the Russian federation. The grannies from Buranovo start the performance at a kiln, baking cookies, hymning quite beautifully in their native language. And then the beat drops. They disperse from the oven and start in with an athletic choreographed dance routine. The camera periodically zooms in on the fire roaring in the oven to give viewers at home updates on the pastries. They finish the routine gathered in a huddle, presenting to the world their cookies on a metal tray. To make this heartwarming story even more touching, they used the spotlight to raise funds for a church reconstruction back home. And for that, they came in second.
Verka Serduchka — “Dancing Lasha Tumbai” (Ukraine, 2007)
Our collective yawn at the Met Gala outfits this year was well deserved. Verka Serduchka and her compatriots wore the cornucopia of silver sheen and futuristic high fashion—designed by Dolce & Gabbana, no less—better than anyone has since. Why even try when they started and ended the trend in a three-minute performance sung in a pastiche of Ukrainian, German, English, and Russian? But Ukraine’s entry into the 2007 contest was not without controversy—especially at home, where the conservative sectors of society were up in arms that a drag queen was going to represent them on the big stage. Verka Serduchka proved those sticks in the mud wrong, coming in second that year.
Dustin the Turkey — “Irelande Douze Points” (Ireland, 2008)
Dustin is an Irish turkey. (If you’re wondering, no, turkeys are not indigenous to Ireland.) Before 2008, he had already amassed quite the collection of hits in his home country, with three of them reaching the top of Irish charts a decade earlier. He also ran for president in 1997 and is a UNICEF ambassador. So Dustin is, without a doubt, the famous turkey in the world. He submitted a satirical tune that mocked everyone from Bono, the judges, and the entire Eastern Bloc, which his producers—wanting to seem “of the moment”—paired with an EDM set complete with Dustin behind the ones and twos. Funniest of all, you can see the turkey’s puppeteer John Morrison dressed in all black, crouching behind Dustin, failing to hide from the cameras. Needless to say, Dustin didn’t make it past the semi-finals. Headlines the day after the performance made lots of bad puns about roasting and cooking an Irish turkey.
Cezar — “It’s My Life” (Romania, 2013)
To most of the English-speaking world, the central region of Romania known as Transylvania is the land of vampires. No country’s culture is just a conglomerated expression of its folklore, of course, but some myths are strong enough that they must be acknowledged on the world’s stage. This must be why Cezar performed as a regal vampire at Eurovision 2013, despite the fact that his entry, “It’’s My Life,” is a run-of-the-mill love song that has absolutely nothing to do with vampires. He may not have won, but he certainly had the most spectacular staging of all the contestants: A silky red tarp lays beneath Cezar, resembling a sea of blood, while pale red dancers perform acrobatics around him, at one point raising the tarp and slowly elevating Cezar until he’s riding that red wave into eternity.
Conchita Wurst — “Rise Like a Phoenix” (Austria, 2014)
ConchitaWurst was a persona developed by the Austrian recording artist Tom Neuwirth in the mid-2000s, and the character has been described as “a cross between Jesus and Kim Kardashian.” Unsurprisingly, Conchita’s selection as Austria’s competitor proved controversial to the close-minded: Protests and petitions from Belarus, Russia, and Armenia asked that Wurst be barred from competing due to a variety of reasons that mostly orbited around a general distaste with wanton displays of sexual freedom. Deliciously in spite of the protests, Wurst won Eurovision, and was the first gender fluid winner of the competition ever. Wurst’s delivery of “Rise Like a Phoenix” at the finals was self-possessed and undeniably powerful. There aren’t enough adjectives in any language to describe the golden rain, the dry-ice fog environs, and crystal-clear voice that lifted Wurst to stardom that night.