Luxembourg 1973

  18º Eurovision Song Contest
 Tu Te Reconnaitras (Anne M. David) - Luxembourg


The 18th Eurovision Song Contest was held in Luxembourg on 7th April 1973. The language rule that allowed countries to only enter songs that were sung in any of their national languages was dropped, thus leading some countries to sing in English.

Luxembourg won the contest with the song "Tu Te Reconnaitras" sung by Anne Marie David who, of course, wasn't from Luxembourg but French. It was Luxembourg's fourth victory and the second time a country would win twice in a row after Spain's 1968 and 1969 victories.

Eurovision 1973 was a three-way battle between three songs: Anne Marie David's, the Spanish "Eres Tú" sung by Mocedades and the British "Power To All Our Friends" performed by Cliff Richard. In the end only 6 points separated Cliff Richard's third place from the winner. Spain was second. The three of them would eventually establish themselves as timeless Eurovision classics.

Eres tú" went on from its second place in the contest to become a huge international hit. In 1974, "Eres tú" became one of the few Spanish language songs to reach the top 10 in the United States, peaking at #9. Although the B-side of the single was the English-language version (Touch the Wind) radio stations always preferred the original Spanish version.

In 2005 the Spanish song was chosen by the audience to compete in Congratulations, an event to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the contest and to determine which was the most popular entrant of its 50 years. Mocedades' Eres Tú ended up 11th. It was one of the only three non winning songs chosen to compete.

This year, also, a woman conducted the ESC orchestra for the first time. There were two actually. Monica Dominique conducted the Swedish entry and Nurit Hirsh conducted the Israeli one. However, as the Israeli song was the last one performed that evening the honour of being the first woman ever to conduct the ESC orchestra officialy goes to Monica Dominique.

This was the first time that Israel entered the contest, although the country was a member of EBU since 1957. They finished 4th. In the light of events at the Olympics in Munich in 1972 there were fears of a terrorist threat against Israel's first-ever entrant and this lead to extremely and unusual tight security for the contest. UK's long-serving commentator Terry Wogan has often caustically recounted 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.

Luxembourg will not host the contest next year. Thanks God we have the UK

See you in Brighton for the 19th Eurovision Song Contest in 1974