Six on Stage Blog

  • Who’s had the most Eurovision roles?

    There are lots of roles at the Eurovision Song Contest and plenty of people have taken on more than one – not least every songwriter who’s delivered their own song on stage. But who has performed the most roles at Eurovision?

    First, some caveats. We’re talking about people representing their country. There are lots of roles at Eurovision beyond this – in TV production, website and social content, stage management, etc. But when it comes to countries’ participation, Six on Stage identifies the following specific roles:

    • Lead artist – the credited singer or group for an entry
    • Backing performer – dancer, backing vocalist, puppeteer – anyone performing an entry on stage who’s not the lead artist
    • Songwriter – you’ll see this broken down into composers and lyricists on song pages (and where that information isn’t available we list credited writers as both), but for this analysis we’re considering the role of writer as a single one
    • Jury member – someone who has been a member of a country’s professional jury
    • Spokesperson – someone who has announced the country’s scores (or, in the current format, their jury’s 12 points)
    • Host – slightly different as it’s not linked to any entry and only the host country provides these each year, but we record this not least because so many hosts have also been involved in other ways
    • Other – we’ve started trying to note creative directors, choreographers, stylists… This is pretty much unlimited and dependent on suitable sources so is never going to be complete. That’s why it’s a generic “Other” category.

    Lots of people fall into three or four of these categories as it’s common for a singer-songwriter to also serve on their country’s jury and sometimes be a spokesperson too, but two people in the Six on Stage database fall into five categories.

    Germany’s Stefan Raab has a long history with the Eurovision Song Contest and that’s reflected in the number of roles he had between 1998 and 2011. He was his country’s named artist in 2000 with Wadde hadde dudde da?, which he also wrote; he wrote and was a backing performer for Max Mutzke‘s 2004 entry; he wrote the legendary Guildo Hat Euch Lieb and turned up to “conduct” the orchestra (who weren’t playing); and finally in 2011 he was one of the Contest’s hosts in Düsseldorf.

    The only person who can match this is Slovenia’s Lea Sirk, and arguably her six roles count more strongly as they don’t include hosting. Her first involvement was actually in 2012 as a jury member before going on to provide backing vocals for Tinkara Kovač in 2014 and ManuElla in 2016. She’s best known for her own entry in 2018, Hvala, ne!, which she also co-wrote, and returned a year later to reveal her country’s jury scores.

    Now if Stefan could come back and sit on Germany’s jury or Lea could host for Slovenia, they could complete the set…

  • Two-time winners

    Two-time winners

    With her victory in Liverpool, Loreen became only the second person – and the first woman – to win the Eurovision Song Contest twice as a lead artist.

    The other person to have achieved the feat is, of course, Johnny Logan, who has the distinction of also having one twice as a writer: for Hold Me Now and for Linda Martin’s Why Me. Like Logan, Loreen was a credited writer only on her second winning song.

    But Loreen wasn’t the only person to achieve a second win this year. Two of the other writers of Tattoo were also writers of Euphoria: the prolific Thomas G:son, who has had 15 songs at Eurovision for 7 different countries (plus a 16th/8th if you include France’s 2020 entry), and Peter Boström, whose previous achievement involving Euphoria was having written the songs that came both first and last in the 2012 final. (Ironically, that last placed song, Norway’s Stay, is his only Eurovision song not co-written with G:son.)

    They join a select group of writers with multiple Eurovision victories:

    • Willy van Hemert (Netherlands 1957 and 1959)
    • Yves Dessca (Monaco 1971, Luxembourg 1972 – notable for winning with different countries, in successive years, and having a 100% success rate with his only two Eurovision entries)
    • Rolf Løvland (Norway 1985 and 1995 – and as artist for the latter as a member of Secret Garden)
    • Johnny Logan (Ireland 1987 and 1992)
    • Brendan J. Graham (Ireland 1994 and 1996)
    • Thomas G:son (Sweden 2012 and 2023)
    • Peter Boström (Sweden 2012 and 2023)

    No writer has yet had three wins – if anyone for that list is going to achieve another, it’s G:son or Boström.

    We should also note that a number of backing singers have been involved with winning songs, some more than twice. They are:

    Finally there are a handful of conductors. Back in the days of the orchestra, many conductors were regular fixtures for their countries and could also conduct for another country when Eurovision was on home soil. Consequently, three conductors have held the baton for multiple Eurovision winners: Dolf van der Linden (Netherlands 1957 and 1959 and Ireland 1970); Franck Pourcel (France 1958, 1960, 1962 and 1969); and the most prolific of all Eurovision conductors, Noel Kelehan (Ireland 1980, 1987, 1992, 1993 and 1996).

  • Who were the 2023 jurors?

    Much of the discussion following the Eurovision Song Contest 2023 has been focused on the differing choices of the national juries compared with the public vote. But who were this year’s jurors, and which of them had been involved with the Contest before?

    Let’s take a look at the jury members who’ve been involved in the Eurovision Song Contest before, and stick around to the end for some controversial notes…

    Artists

    Sixteen previous Eurovision entrants leant their experience on stage to a dozen national juries this year. They were:

    Backing performers

    Six on Stage particularly celebrates backing performers and at least 11 former Eurovision backing vocalists, musicians and dancers were on their countries’ juries this year. In addition to some of the artists above, they were:

    David Badalyan was also one of the writers of Armenia’s winning Junior Eurovision song Qami Qami in 2021.

    Songwriters

    Perhaps unsurprisingly, a big group of jurors were composers and lyricists, including at least 25 who have written for Eurovision. Some notable members of this group, excluding those already mentioned:

    And also…

    Falling into none of those categories and sitting on Denmark’s jury was Birgitte Næss-Schmidt, who has directed the staging of their entries on eight occasions between 2005 and 2022.

    Norway’s jury included a couple of unsuccessful Melodi Grand Prix finalists, Emmy from 2021 and JONE from 2023, while Sweden’s included Clara Klingenström from Melodifestivalen 2021.

    Returning jurors

    At least 25 former jurors returned for a second (or third!) go at judging Eurovision songs, many of them already featured in the lists above. Those who’ve had the role more than once before include:

    The earliest returning juror was Matjaž Vlašič, who last did the role 14 years ago in 2009.

    So here’s where it gets a little controversial, if only because I don’t have a copy of the current rules for selecting jurors.

    In previous years, there have been a number of rules for the selection of jurors, two of which are:

    • Jurors can’t have sat on a Eurovision jury in the previous two years (which for this year would mean not in 2021 or 2022).
    • Jurors cannot have any direct connection to the songs and/or artists (exactly what this means isn’t set out).

    Last year I highlighted a few 2022 jurors who had been jurors for the previous two contests, and this was also the case for one of the Samminese jurors in 2021. This year there are two jurors who were listed as jurors for their countries in 2021, which as far as we know isn’t allowed: Lise Cabble for Denmark and Sokol Marsi for Albania. Given it’s apparently been broken three years in a row, I’d be interested to know if the rule has changed – after all, a lot did because of Covid.

    On the second rule, a link to your own country’s song or artist may be unavoidable and it’s reasonable to suggest that it isn’t much of an issue given jurors don’t rank their own country. But since the rule doesn’t specify that, it’s worth noting in passing that Gustaph performed as a Eurovision backing vocalist for both Sennek and Hooverphonic, while Aliona Moon was a backing singer for Pasha Parfeni and 2012 and her 2013 song was written by him. Music is a small world and there are probably other examples too. None of that should imply wrongdoing, but if the rule is still in force it would be interesting to know if it only applies to songs jurors can vote for.

  • 10,000 and onwards!

    Six on Stage has reached a big milestone with 10,000 people connected to the Eurovision Song Contest now listed on the site!

    That includes 5,632 people who have performed on the Constest stage at in some capacity as part of a country’s entry, 2,880 songwriters (some of whom performed as well), 833 national spokespeople and 1,765 jurors. There are also 339 conductors – the only number that’s not going to increase any time soon.

    With national final season for 2023 now underway, more people will be added to the site in the coming weeks. The 9,999th person I added was Sidorela Kelmendi, one of the newly-selected family group representing Albania alongside Albina Kelmendi in Liverpool.

    But the 10,000th person was a juror from 1974. Lawyer Basil Herwald was interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme by guest editor Björn Ulvaeus. They discussed Basil’s contribution to the 1974 Contest as one of the UK jurors – none of whom gave their one vote to ABBA.

  • Name that skiffler

    How do you identify a backing singer when there’s no footage of them performing?

    That’s the problem with Luxembourg’s 1964 entry, Dès Que Le Printemps Revient by Hugues Aufray. Most of the Contest is lost, but on the audio you can hear backing singers repeating back lines from the song. There was no indication in other sources that there was anyone on stage with Aufray, but there must have been. These are the only unidentified performers from Eurovision 1964 – so who were they?

    My first stop was Hugues Aufray’s skiffle group. You can see them performing a different song together in 1964 here:

    Given Aufray had a regular band, it seems likely that at least some of them joined him on stage in Copenhagen in 1964.

    The YouTube video description names five members of the group who accompanied him in concert that year: guitarists Tatcho Fantini, Claude Mevel, Freddy Street and Michel Langouet, and double bassist Francis Dunglas.

    For some time, I thought this was as far as I would get. But then I saw this new colourisation of a number of photos I hadn’t previously been aware of:

    The black-and-white originals in the DK archive indicate that Aufray had two backing performers. One is shown fairly clearly; the other is unfortunately obscured in every image.

    At least we stand a chance of identifying at least one.

    Helpfully, the photographer Tony Frank took a range of photos of the group in the 1960s and has put them on his website. Here’s one from 1963 – the guitarist on the left of Frank’s photo appears to be Aufray’s visible musician in the photo above. The names in the caption match those we got from YouTube, although it’s not clear if the order in the caption is a left-to-right match with the band members in the photo.

    For a start, we can discount the double bass player. With a bit more research and cross-referencing with different sources, I’m confident that the man we can see on stage in 1964 is Tatcho Fantini.

    One down, one to go. Even though we can’t see the other guitarist’s face, we can see one useful clue: he’s playing left-handed. And if you watch the YouTube video above, only one of Aufray’s contemporary group played the guitar that way round. That’s the fifth person in Frank’s photo, smiling at the back.

    A bit more cross-referencing with other images and videos and a process of elimination and we can be fairly sure the second guitarist and backing singer, whose face we never see, was Freddy Street.

    And with that the list of performers for 1964 on Six on Stage is complete!