| This was the first contest to
return to a previous host nation (France), a previous host (Jacqueline
Joubert) and
a previous venue (the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès). It
was also the first to be held on a Saturday night (where it has stayed
ever since), and saw the arrival of three undoubted Eurovision greats:
the Fascist Spain, the Communist Yugoslavia, and the Finlandised
Finland. Finland's debut entry was a rather fetching
Bond-theme-inflected ballad with a strong flavour of the inevitable
tango to it. Spain went for an Italian feel to their entry while
Yugoslavia had a Dora Bryan look-alike doing something that sounded a
lot like "Grenada". Perhaps most amazingly, 1961 was the first year where our jury concurred with the official result, agreeing that Luxembourg's entry was the best: a decent slab of skittish chanson delivered by Jean-Claude Pascal. Our recent favourites, the UK, were less giddy than previously with a rather contemporary Everlys style vocal duo. Elsewhere, Italy captured a winning formula (though didn't win with it) in the form of the sing-along-able 'la-la-la'-ing of the passionate and building "Al di là". If anything, they didn't make enough of what could have been a truly anthemic chorus. Sweden also realised a trick with their song "April April": combining the joyous whistling of recent UK entries with the kooky bounce of the Scandinavian sound and certain internationally recognised word-forms such as "ring-a-ding". There was a curiously temporal theme to the songs this year, with two separate "April"s, a "September", "Spring", "Summer", a "day" and "tomorrow". 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. In brackets is the position the song came on the night:
Europe had Switzerland third, Denmark joint-fifth, Norway seventh, Yugoslavia eighth, and Austria and Belgium join-last. |
 The winner: Jean-Claude Pascal.  Italy's Betty Curtis.  "Ring-a-Ding": Sweden's Lill-Babs.  Finland's Laila Kinnunen. |
