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The Eurovision Song Contest 1973 was the 18th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, following the country's victory at the 1972 contest with the song "Après toi" by Vicky Leandros. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Télédiffusion (CLT), the contest was held at the Grand Théâtre on 7 April 1973 and was hosted by German television presenter Helga Guitton.

Eurovision Song Contest 1973
Dates
Final	7 April 1973
Host
Venue	Grand Théâtre Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
Presenter(s)	Helga Guitton
Musical director	Pierre Cao
Directed by	René Steichen
Executive supervisor	Clifford Brown
Executive producer	Paul Ulveling
Host broadcaster	Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Télédiffusion (CLT)
Opening act	Pierre Cao and the orchestra performing "Après toi" to a montage of views of Luxembourg and behind the scenes.
Interval act	Charlie Rivel
Website	eurovision.tv/event/luxembourg-1973
Participants
Number of entries	17
Debuting countries	Israel
Returning countries	None
Non-returning countries	Malta  Austria
Participation map      Participating countries     Countries that participated in the past but not in 1973
Vote
Voting system	Two-member juries (one aged 16 to 25 and the other 25 to 55) rated songs between one and five points.
Nul points in final	None
Winning song	Luxembourg "Tu te reconnaîtras"
1972 ← Eurovision Song Contest → 1974

Seventeen countries took part in the contest this year, with Austria and Malta deciding not to participate, and Israel competing for the first time.

In a back-to-back victory, Luxembourg won the contest again with the song "Tu te reconnaîtras" by Anne-Marie David. The voting was a very close one, with Spain with "Eres tú" by Mocedades finishing only 4 points behind and the United Kingdom with "Power to All Our Friends" by Cliff Richard (who had come second in 1968 just behind Spain) another 2 points further back. The winning song scored the highest score ever achieved in Eurovision under any voting format until 1975, recording 129 points out of a possible 160, which represented almost 81% of the possible maximum. This was partly due to a scoring system which guaranteed all countries at least two points from each country.[1]

Location

Luxembourg City is a commune with city status, and the capital of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It is located at the confluence of the Alzette and Pétrusse Rivers in southern Luxembourg. The city contains the historic Luxembourg Castle, established by the Franks in the Early Middle Ages, around which a settlement developed.

The Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, inaugurated in 1964 as the Théâtre Municipal de la Ville de Luxembourg, became the venue for the 1973 contest. It is the city's major venue for drama, opera and ballet.[2][3]

Format

The language rule forcing countries to enter songs sung in any of their national languages was dropped this year, so performers from some countries sang in English.

The orchestra was positioned on stage, behind and to the stage right of the singers, in a stacked gallery on three tiers. Giant clear tubes containing multi-coloured flowers were set on the stage left. No introductions were made for each individual entry, with the commentators providing the details of the songs and singers, speaking over a still photograph of the artists taken during the dress rehearsal shown on screen.

In light of the events that had happened during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, there were fears of a terrorist threat, particularly directed against Israel's first-ever entrant, leading to unusually tight security for the contest. This gave rise to one of the best-known Eurovision anecdotes, frequently recounted by the UK's long-serving commentator Terry Wogan. He recalled that the floor manager strongly advised the audience to remain seated while applauding the performances, otherwise they risked being shot by security forces.[4]

This contest holds the record for the most watched Eurovision Song Contest in the United Kingdom, and is also the 18th most watched television show in the same country, with an estimated 21.54 million tuning in on the night. Cliff Richard represented the UK with the song "Power to All Our Friends". He came 3rd with 123 points. The winner though was Anne-Marie David with "Tu te reconnaîtras". In the UK it was released in English under the title "Wonderful Dream" and released on Epic. It made number 13.

Voting

Each country had two jury members, one aged between 16 and 25 and one aged between 26 and 55. They each awarded 1 to 5 points for each song (other than the song from their own country) immediately after it was performed and the votes were collected and counted as soon as they were cast. The juries watched the show on TV from the Ville du Louvigny TV Studios of CLT and appeared on screen to confirm their scores.

Participating countries

Seventeen nations took part in this year's contest with Malta being drawn to perform in 6th place between Norway and Monaco, but the Maltese broadcaster withdrew before the deadline to select an entry. Austria also decided not to participate either.[5]

Conductors

Each performance had a conductor who directed the orchestra.[6][5] The 1973 contest marked the first time that women conducted the orchestra. Monica Dominique conducted the Swedish entry and Nurit Hirsh conducted the Israeli entry.

Returning artists

Artist	Country	Previous year(s)
Marion Rung	Finland	1962
Cliff Richard	United Kingdom	1968
Massimo Ranieri	Italy	1971

Participants and results

R/O	Country	Artist	Song	Language[7][8]	Points	Place[9]
1	Finland	Marion Rung	"Tom Tom Tom"	English	93	6
2	Belgium	Nicole and Hugo	"Baby, Baby"	Dutch[lower-alpha 1]	58	17
3	Portugal	Fernando Tordo	"Tourada"	Portuguese	80	10
4	Germany	Gitte	"Junger Tag"	German	85	8
5	Norway	Bendik Singers	"It's Just a Game"	English, French[lower-alpha 2]	89	7
6	Monaco	Marie	"Un train qui part"	French	85	8
7	Spain	Mocedades	"Eres tú"	Spanish	125	2
8	Switzerland	Patrick Juvet	"Je vais me marier, Marie"	French	79	12
9	Yugoslavia	Zdravko Čolić	"Gori vatra" (Гори ватра)	Serbo-Croatian	65	15
10	Italy	Massimo Ranieri	"Chi sarà con te"	Italian	74	13
11	Luxembourg	Anne-Marie David	"Tu te reconnaîtras"	French	129	1
12	Sweden	The Nova and the Dolls	"You're Summer"	English	94	5
13	Netherlands	Ben Cramer	"De oude muzikant"	Dutch	69	14
14	Ireland	Maxi	"Do I Dream"	English	80	10
15	United Kingdom	Cliff Richard	"Power to All Our Friends"	English	123	3
16	France	Martine Clémenceau	"Sans toi"	French	65	15
17	Israel	Ilanit	"Ey Sham" (אי שם)	Hebrew	97	4

Detailed voting results

Detailed voting results[10][11]

		Total score	Finland	Belgium	Portugal	Germany	Norway	Monaco	Spain	Switzerland	Yugoslavia	Italy	Luxembourg	Sweden	Netherlands	Ireland	United Kingdom	France	Israel
Contestants	Finland	93		9	5	6	6	5	6	6	7	2	6	7	5	5	9	4	5
	Belgium	58	4		3	4	3	6	6	4	4	2	4	2	3	4	5	2	2
	Portugal	80	4	6		5	5	4	8	8	6	3	4	2	5	4	5	6	5
	Germany	85	2	5	6		4	5	9	7	4	3	7	6	5	6	5	7	4
	Norway	89	8	5	5	6		7	6	7	6	5	7	3	3	3	3	6	9
	Monaco	85	6	3	2	4	3		6	5	9	8	6	4	5	6	9	5	4
	Spain	125	3	8	9	9	4	9		8	9	10	8	7	10	10	4	9	8
	Switzerland	79	4	3	3	4	7	5	7		6	4	6	3	8	7	7	2	3
	Yugoslavia	65	5	3	3	4	2	5	8	6		2	4	2	4	5	4	4	4
	Italy	74	2	5	3	5	5	5	5	7	5		5	5	4	4	5	5	4
	Luxembourg	129	6	6	8	7	8	7	6	10	9	9		8	9	8	10	10	8
	Sweden	94	8	4	4	5	8	5	7	9	6	5	6		6	5	7	4	5
	Netherlands	69	4	4	2	5	5	4	5	5	5	4	7	3		5	3	6	2
	Ireland	80	3	7	2	4	6	6	7	5	5	5	6	5	6		5	4	4
	United Kingdom	123	9	6	6	7	7	8	4	8	8	5	10	9	10	9		8	9
	France	65	4	3	2	4	4	5	5	4	7	2	3	5	5	5	5		2
	Israel	97	6	6	5	7	5	7	4	6	7	7	8	6	6	7	5	5

10 points

Below is a summary of all perfect 10 scores that were given during the voting.

N.	Contestant	Nation(s) giving 10 points
3	Luxembourg	France,  Switzerland,  United Kingdom
	Spain	Ireland,  Italy,  Netherlands
2	United Kingdom	Netherlands,  Luxembourg

Jury members

This section needs additional citations for verification. (June 2021)

Listed below is the order in which votes were cast during the 1973 contest along with the names of the two jury members who voted for their respective country. Each country announced their results in groups of three, with the final two countries voting in a group of two.

Broadcasts and commentators

This section needs additional citations for verification. (June 2021)

Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language. In addition to the participating countries, the contest was also reportedly broadcast in Austria, Greece, Iceland, Malta and Turkey, in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union via Intervision, and in Japan.[5]

Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries

Country	Broadcaster(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
Belgium	RTB	French: Paule Herreman
	BRT	Dutch: Herman Verelst [nl]
	RTB La Première	French: André Hagon
	BRT Radio 1	Dutch: Nand Baert [nl] and Jan Theys [nl]
Finland	YLE TV1	Erkki Pohjanheimo	[15]
	Yleisohjelma	Erkki Melakoski [fi]
France	Première Chaîne ORTF	Pierre Tchernia
Germany	Deutsches Fernsehen	Hanns Verres [de]
	Deutschlandfunk	Wolf Mittler
Ireland	RTÉ	Frank Hall
	RTÉ Radio	Liam Devally	[16]
Israel	Israeli Television	No commentary
Italy	Programma Nazionale	Renato Tagliani [it]
Luxembourg	RTL Télé Luxembourg	Jacques Navadic
	RTL	Camillo Felgen
Monaco	Télé Monte Carlo	Hélène Vida [fr]
Netherlands	Nederland 1	Pim Jacobs	[17]
Norway	NRK, NRK P1	John Andreassen	[13]
Portugal	I Programa	Artur Agostinho	[18]
	Emissora Nacional Programa 1	Amadeu Meireles [pt]
Spain	Primera Cadena	Julio Rico
Sweden	SR TV1	Alicia Lundberg [sv]	[14][15]
	SR P3	Ursula Richter [sv]
Switzerland	TV DRS	German: Theodor Haller [de]
	TSR	French: Georges Hardy [fr]	[19]
	TSI	Italian: Giovanni Bertini
	1e Programme	French: Robert Burnier	[20]
United Kingdom	BBC1	Terry Wogan	[5]
	BBC Radio 2	Pete Murray	[5]
	BFBS Radio	Richard Astbury	[5]
Yugoslavia	TVB 1	Serbo-Croatian: Milovan Ilić
	TVZ 1	Serbo-Croatian: Oliver Mlakar
	TVL 1	Slovene: Tomaž Terček [sl]

Broadcasters and commentators in non-participating countries

Country	Broadcaster(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
Austria	FS2	Ernst Grissemann [de]
Greece	EIRT	Mako Georgiadou [el]
Iceland	Sjónvarpið	Jón O. Edwald	[21]
Malta	MTV	Charles Saliba
Turkey	Ankara Television	Bülend Özveren

Incidents

This section needs additional citations for verification. (October 2021)

Spanish song plagiarism allegation

The event was marked by controversy when the Spanish song, "Eres tú" sung by Mocedades, was accused of plagiarism due to reasonable similarities in the melody with "Brez besed" sung by Berta Ambrož, the Yugoslav entry from the 1966 contest; however, "Eres tú" was not disqualified. After finishing second in the contest, it went on to become a huge international hit.

Concerns with lyrics

The somewhat elliptical lyrics to Portugal's entry "Tourada" provided sufficient cover for a song that was clearly understood as a blistering assault on the country's decaying dictatorship. Also, the word "breasts" was used during Sweden's song entry. However, no action was taken by the EBU.

Disagreements within the Irish delegation

An argument broke out between the singer Maxi and her Irish delegation over how the song should be performed. During rehearsals she repeatedly stopped performing in frustration. When it began to appear possible that Maxi might withdraw from the contest, RTÉ immediately sent over another singer, Tina Reynolds, to take her place just in case. In the end Miss Reynolds wasn't needed as Maxi did perform, with her entry earning 10th place on the scoreboard. Reynolds would perform the following year.

Notes

References

External links

• Official website

На других языках

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- [en] Eurovision Song Contest 1973

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[ru] Евровидение-1973

Конкурс песни Евровидение 1973 — 18-й конкурс песни «Евровидение». Он прошёл 7 апреля 1973 года в городе Люксембург (Люксембург) на сцене Гран-театра. Второй год подряд победу одержал Люксембург, на этот раз с песней «Tu te reconnaîtras» («Ты узнаешь себя»), исполненной Анной-Марией Давид.

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