| The first Eurovision Song
Contest was not like the others; not least
because each competing country entered two songs. Another difference
was that the voting was conducted in camera, and this means that we
lack the important scoring data we need in order to rank the nations on
our grand scoreboard. As a consequence of this (and supported to an
extent by the different format) we have taken the decision to exclude
this year's contest from any figures, tables and calculations that
exist elsewhere on this site. But that doesn't mean we can ignore it. And although no film of the concert has survived, the soundtrack is available online along with footage of the reprise of the winning song. It's inevitable that a little something is lost by not being able to see the competitors, but perhaps this helps to make 1956 truly a song contest, unadulterated by stagecraft. The winner on the night was the Swiss entry "Refrain", sung by Lys Assia. It's by no means a dreadful song (we placed it 7th) but it plays very safe and is very "Sing Something Simple"-friendly. It does build quite nicely, though, and there's the faintest hint of latin. Staid was largely the order of the day in 1956, which makes the second German entry, Freddy Quinn's Bill Haley rip-off "So geht das jede Nacht" all the more exciting (and if you understand German, the lyrics are pretty racy too). The song apparently gained something of a following in Japan, as one might expect. Meanwhile, Belgium showed some early promise by putting forward Fud Leclerc with the dark and moody chanson of "Messieurs les noyés de la Seine". The clear winner, though, in our minds, was the second French song: Dany Dauberson's frantic "Il est là": ridden with brass stabs and chase-sequence string ripples, it's the one song of 1956 with a genuinely measurable pulse. For each year's songs we apply our points in the 12-10-8 style of the modern contest, irrespective of how the voting functioned at the time:
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 Our winner, Dany Dauberson.  The rocking Freddy Quinn in 1961.
With the AView jurors' points for both of a nation's songs combined, the national result is as follows:
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