Over the next month or two ESC NORGE will look at several memorable songs that AUSTRIA sent to the Eurovision song contest. ESC Covers have again google translated it from Norwegian to English.

This is a blog post and only represents the writer Morten Thomassen’s own views.

Before the year ends, I think it might be a good idea to look at some memorable songs from Austrian ESC history, and this time I’m focusing on 1957.

It was the first time the next year’s host country itself participated, being the second year this competition took place and they made their debut along with Denmark and Great Britain, all three of which had broadcast the 1956 final.

Rumor has it that our British friends didn’t participate the first year due to a separate music competition they were hosting, while our Danish and Austrian friends were simply too late to pull the trigger and didn’t get their entries in before the deadline, they wanted to participate.

Very often in ESC history, debut countries do very well or very poorly in terms of results in the first year and for the first ever participant for this year’s next organizer Bob Martin, he finished very last on the results list.

He was awarded a measly 3 points for the song “Wohin, kleines pony?” and that title probably means something like “Where are you, little pony?” and this is actually my favorite song from this year, I think this is a pretty cool song in the landscape between pop and jazz, I would say.

There’s something life-affirming about this song that puts a smile on my face and sometimes that can be a good enough reason to like a song, I don’t need better reasons why this is my favorite song this year.

Bob Martin was actually born in Siberia of all places and his real name was Leo Happe and all I can find about him on the internet is that despite his last place he was a popular artist in the southern part of Austria and he died in 1998, aged 75 and he must not be confused with an American artist with the same name who has obviously released several CDs, anyway, the first time an Austrian stood on the ESC stage deserves a reunion and here it is.

Featured image – Eurovision world