Waterloo, 1974: the three minutes that changed Eurovision

Every argument about what Eurovision is for traces back to one evening in Brighton in April 1974.

Why Brighton

Luxembourg won in 1973 and, having hosted the year before, declined to pay for it again. Hosting was already expensive enough that a small broadcaster could win and then ask someone else to stage it — a problem the contest has never fully solved, and the same arithmetic that made Ireland uncomfortable two decades later.

The BBC took it on and the contest went to the Brighton Dome.

The entry

Sweden sent a group performing under their own names for the first time, with a song about surrender as a romantic metaphor, arranged as glam rock rather than as a Eurovision ballad. They wore satin and platform boots. The conductor wore a Napoleon costume.

None of that was normal. Eurovision in 1974 was a light-entertainment showcase for national broadcasters, and the standard entry was orchestral, sincere and sung by someone standing still.

"Waterloo" was a pop record. It was built to be a hit outside the contest, which almost nothing in the field was, and it sounded like the radio rather than like the show.

The result

Sweden won — its first victory, of what are now seven. The United Kingdom's jury gave "Waterloo" no points at all, a detail that has outlived almost everything else about that night.

Why it still matters

ABBA became the most commercially successful act ever to emerge from Eurovision, by a distance that is difficult to overstate, and that created a belief the contest has been living with ever since: that Eurovision can launch a global career.

It very rarely does. A small number of acts have used it as a genuine springboard — Céline Dion, who won for Switzerland in 1988, is the other obvious case — but the overwhelming majority of winners return to a domestic career. The exception became the expectation.

That expectation is why countries agonise over selection, why "is this a Eurovision song or a real song" is a question fans argue about every year, and why a broadcaster sending something deliberately safe attracts genuine anger. Everyone is measuring against Brighton.

The Swedish consequence

Sweden took the lesson more seriously than anyone. Melodifestivalen grew into a six-week national institution and a functioning songwriting industry, and Sweden has since won seven times and become a net exporter of songs to other countries' entries.

The country that turned a single win into a system is the same one that got the win by treating the contest as a pop competition rather than a broadcasting obligation. See most Eurovision wins for where that has left the record books.