The Eurovision Song Contest 1984 was the 29th edition of the
Eurovision Song Contest
The Eurovision Song Contest (), often known simply as Eurovision, is an international Music competition, song competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) among its members since 1956. Each participating broadcaster ...
, held on 5 May 1984 in the in
Luxembourg City
Luxembourg (; ; ), also known as Luxembourg City ( or ; ; or ), is the capital city of Luxembourg and the Communes of Luxembourg, country's most populous commune. Standing at the confluence of the Alzette and Pétrusse rivers in southern Luxe ...
, Luxembourg. Organised by the
European Broadcasting Union
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU; , UER) is an alliance of Public broadcasting, public service media organisations in countries within the European Broadcasting Area (EBA) or who are member states of the Council of Europe, members of the ...
(EBU) and host broadcaster (RTL), the contest was held in Luxembourg following the country's victory at the with the song "" by
Corinne Hermès. The event was presented by
Désirée Nosbusch, who, at 19 years old, remains the youngest person to have hosted the contest .
Nineteen countries participated in the contest, with returning after a one-year absence, and and , which had participated in the previous year's event, declining to enter. The winner was with the song "
Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley", composed by
Torgny Söderberg, written by
Britt Lindeborg and performed by the group
Herreys. This was Sweden's second contest victory, coming ten years after
ABBA
ABBA ( ) were a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. They are one of the most popular and successful musical groups of all time, and are one of the List ...
's win in the . Ireland finished as runner-up, and placed third and fourth, respectively, and and tied for fifth place.
Location
The 1984 contest took place in
Luxembourg City
Luxembourg (; ; ), also known as Luxembourg City ( or ; ; or ), is the capital city of Luxembourg and the Communes of Luxembourg, country's most populous commune. Standing at the confluence of the Alzette and Pétrusse rivers in southern Luxe ...
, Luxembourg, following the country's victory at the with the song "" performed by
Corinne Hermès. It was the fourth time that Luxembourg had hosted the event, following the contests held in , and . The chosen venue was the , also known as the or , an arts venue inaugurated in 1964, and which had previously hosted the contest in 1973. Luxembourgish broadcaster (RTL) initially had difficulty in finding a suitable venue to host the contest and eventually settled on the , which was smaller compared to the venue used at the 1983 contest.
The theatre's main auditorium usually holds an audience around 950 people, however this was reduced with the addition of technical equipment and commentator's boxes. As a result, only press, members of each country's delegation and diplomatic representatives were allowed to watch the live show at the venue.
Participants
Entries from a total of 19 countries participated in the event. returned to the contest after a one-year absence, however and decided not to participate. The
Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) declined to enter as the date of the contest coincided with , while the
Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT), which had originally planned to participate in the contest, reportedly withdrew as the quality of the songs submitted for consideration was deemed to be of too low a quality.
A number of the participating artists in this year's event had previously competed in past editions of the contest.
Mary Roos had finished third for and made a second appearance for the country in 1984;
Izolda Barudžija, who had been a member of the group
Aska that represented , participated again this year alongside
Vlado Kalember;
Kit Rolfe, lead singer of
Belle and the Devotions, had previously performed as a backing vocalist for the , and
Gary Lux, who had represented as a member of the group
Westend, returned as a backing vocalist for the Austrian singer
Anita.
Production and format
The Eurovision Song Contest 1984 was produced by the Luxembourgish public broadcaster (RTL). Ray van Cant served as executive producer, served as producer, René Steichen served as director, served as designer, and
Pierre Cao served as musical director, leading the orchestra.
A separate musical director could be nominated by each country to lead the orchestra during their performance, with the host musical director also available to
conduct for those countries which did not nominate their own conductor. On behalf of the
European Broadcasting Union
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU; , UER) is an alliance of Public broadcasting, public service media organisations in countries within the European Broadcasting Area (EBA) or who are member states of the Council of Europe, members of the ...
(EBU), the event was overseen by Frank Naef as
scrutineer. The overall costs to organise the event were around 35 million
Luxembourgish francs.
Each participating broadcaster submitted one song, which was required to be no longer than three minutes in duration and performed in the language, or one of the languages, of the country which it represented.
A maximum of six performers were allowed on stage during each country's performance.
Each entry could utilise all or part of the live orchestra and could use instrumental-only
backing tracks, however any backing tracks used could only include the sound of instruments featured on stage being
mimed by the performers.
The results of the 1984 contest were determined through the same scoring system as had first been introduced in : each country awarded twelve points to its favourite entry, followed by ten points to its second favourite, and then awarded points in decreasing value from eight to one for the remaining songs which featured in the country's top ten, with countries unable to vote for their own entry. The points awarded by each country were determined by an assembled jury of 11 individuals, who were all required to be members of the public with no connection to the music industry, with a recommendation that there should be a balance between the sexes and that half should be under 25 years old. Each jury member voted in secret and awarded between one and five votes to each participating song, excluding that from their own country and with no abstentions permitted. The votes of each member were collected following the country's performance and then tallied by the non-voting jury chairperson to determine the points to be awarded. In any cases where two or more songs in the top ten received the same number of votes, a show of hands by all jury members was used to determine the final placing.
Rehearsals for the participating artists began on 30 April 1984. Two technical rehearsals were conducted for each participating delegation in the week approaching the contest, with countries rehearsing in the order in which they would perform. The first rehearsals of 40 minutes were held on 30 April and 1 May 1984, followed by a press conference for each delegation and the accredited press. Each country's second rehearsals were held on 2 and 3 May and lasted 20 minutes total. Three dress rehearsals were held with all artists, two held in the afternoon and evening of 4 May and one final rehearsal in the afternoon of 5 May, with an invited audience present for the second dress rehearsal.
Dutch designer Roland de Groot was in charge of the set design of the contest for the fourth time, having previously done so , , and , the three previous contests staged in the Netherlands. For the 1984 contest, de Groot's design centred around various shapes which were suspended over the performance area on a series of pulleys and which could be moved around the stage in between the competing acts; this allowed for different backdrops to be created for each entry.
Each entry was preceded by a video postcard which served as an introduction to that country, as well as creating a transition between entries to allow stage crew to make changes on stage. The postcards for the 1984 contest featured a troupe of actors referred to during the contest as "the Tourists", and focused on the various cultural stereotypes of each of the competing countries and portrayed these a humorous context, often with heavy use of
computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for digitally generating Film, moving images. The more general term computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both still images and moving images, while computer animation refers to moving images. Virtu ...
.
Contest overview
The contest was held on 5 May 1984, beginning at 21:00 (
CEST) and lasting 2 hours and 12 minutes.
The event was presented by the Luxembourgish television presenter and actress
Désirée Nosbusch, who compèred the contest in French, German, Luxembourgish, and English; at 19 years old, Nosbusch remains the youngest individual to have hosted the Eurovision Song Contest .
Among the invited guests present in the audience was
Prince Henri, then
heir to the Luxembourger throne. The contest's interval act featured a performance by the Prague Theatre of Illuminated Drawings.
The medallions awarded to the winners were presented by the previous year's winning artist
Corinne Hermès.
The 1984 contest featured one of the first instances of
booing to be heard at the Eurovision Song Contest, which occurred immediately after the UK's entry. Various reasons for the booing have been proposed: these include being a response to
football hooliganism which occurred in Luxembourg by English football fans during the
qualifying stage of the
1984 European Championship, the use of off-stage backing vocalists during the UK's performance which gave an impression that members of Belle and the Devotions were
lip sync
Lip sync or lip synch (pronounced , like the word ''sink'', despite the Hard and soft C, spelling of the participial forms ''synced'' and ''syncing''), short for lip synchronization, is a technical term for matching a Speech, speaking or singin ...
ing, and allegations that their song, "
Love Games", which was heavily inspired by 1960s
Motown
Motown is an American record label owned by the Universal Music Group. Founded by Berry Gordy, Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on January 12, 1959, it was incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960. Its name, a portmanteau ...
tracks, had plagiarised previous tracks by
the Supremes
The Supremes were an American girl group formed in Detroit, Michigan, in 1959 as the Primettes. A premier act of Motown Records during the 1960s, the Supremes were the most commercially successful of Motown's acts and the most successful Amer ...
.
The winner was represented by the song "
Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley", composed by
Torgny Söderberg, written by
Britt Lindeborg and performed by
Herreys, comprising brothers
Per,
Richard
Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic language">Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'st ...
and Louis Herrey. It was Sweden's second contest win, ten years after
ABBA
ABBA ( ) were a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. They are one of the most popular and successful musical groups of all time, and are one of the List ...
's victory in . It was also the thirdand, , lasttime that the winning entry was the first to be performed, following the and . During the traditional winner's reprise performance, the group sung part of the winning song in English, with lyrics written by Per Herrey.
Spokespersons
Each participating broadcaster appointed a spokesperson, connected to the contest venue via
telephone line
A telephone line or telephone circuit (or just line or circuit industrywide) is a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system. It is designed to reproduce speech of a quality that is understandable. It is the physical wire or oth ...
s and responsible for announcing, in English or French, the votes for its respective country.
Known spokespersons at the 1984 contest are listed below.
* Solveig Herlin
* Flip van der Schalie
* Francisca Hortelano Notario
*
Agneta Bolme Börjefors
* Başak Doğru
*
Colin Berry
Detailed voting results
Jury voting was used to determine the points awarded by all countries. The announcement of the results from each country was conducted in the order in which they performed, with the spokespersons announcing their country's points in English or French in ascending order.
The detailed breakdown of the points awarded by each country is listed in the tables below.
12 points
The below table summarises how the maximum 12 points were awarded from one country to another. The winning country is shown in bold. Sweden received the maximum score of 12 points from five of the voting countries, with Ireland receiving four sets of 12 points, Belgium, Denmark, Italy and Sweden each receiving two sets of 12 points, and Cyprus and France receiving one maximum score each.
Broadcasts
Each participating broadcaster was required to relay the contest via its networks. Non-participating member broadcasters were also able to relay the contest as "passive participants".
Broadcasters were able to send commentators to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language and to relay information about the artists and songs to their viewers. These commentators were typically sent to the venue to report on the event, and were able to provide commentary from small booths constructed at the back of the venue. The contest was reportedly broadcast in 30 countries, with an estimated audience of 500 million viewers.
Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below.
Notes and references
Notes
References
Bibliography
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External links
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{{Portal bar, Music
1984
Music festivals in Luxembourg
1984 in music
Music in Luxembourg City
Events in Luxembourg City
1984 in Luxembourg
20th century in Luxembourg City
May 1984 in Europe