All Kinds of Everything: Ireland's First Crown

MAY 15 1970 · 12:05

Dana · "All Kinds of Everything" · Ireland · 1970 Placement: 1st · Score: 32 · Language: English · Composers: Derry Lindsay, Jackie Smith · Venue: RAI Congrescentrum · Host: Amsterdam, Netherlands · Type: winner · Broadcast: color crt On March 21, 1970, at the RAI Congrescentrum in Amsterdam, an 18-year-old singer from Derry named Rosemary Brown, performing as Dana, delivered 'All Kinds of Everything,' a simple folk-ballad listing the small things in life she loved: raindrops on roses, sleigh bells, summertime. She sang seated in a white dress, acoustic and unadorned, with the kind of wide-eyed earnestness that bypassed the more theatrical continental-European entries of that year. Ireland had participated in Eurovision since 1965 without a win. Dana won with 32 points, giving Ireland its first Eurovision victory and triggering an emotional public response across the country, she was received at the Aras an Uachtarain by President Eamon de Valera, her Derry neighborhood was illuminated, and her song became an instant national-cultural artifact. The timing was culturally freighted: Dana was from Derry, and 1970 was two years into The Troubles. An 18-year-old girl from Northern Ireland winning Eurovision for the Republic of Ireland crossed a charged border in a way political institutions had not yet found a way to. Context Eurovision 1970 was held in the Netherlands as a compromise host following the 1969 four-way tie. Five nations had withdrawn from the 1970 contest in protest of the previous year's chaotic result, Austria, Finland, Norway, Portugal, and Sweden, reducing the field to twelve entries. Ireland had entered every Eurovision since 1965 and had placed well without winning. Dana herself had been a Derry-based teenage singer competing in local talent shows before being selected through RTÉ's national final. The Troubles had escalated dramatically from 1968 onward, and the Northern Ireland-Republic of Ireland cultural and political boundary was at a particularly raw moment. Legacy Dana's 1970 win began Ireland's ascent to eventual Eurovision dominance, the country would go on to win seven times, more than any other nation except Sweden. 'All Kinds of Everything' remained a pop standard for decades; Dana continued a performance career and later entered Irish politics, becoming a Member of the European Parliament. The song's simplicity, against the era's trend toward theatrical continental production, became a retroactively cited template for the 'honest ballad' Eurovision winner (Sobral 2017 being the most recent clear example). The cross-border symbolism of a Derry singer winning for the Republic has been periodically revisited in Irish-cultural writing. Mythology Dana is sometimes described as the first singer from Northern Ireland to represent the Republic; the North-South Eurovision distinction operates differently from political geography and her selection was uncontroversial within Irish broadcasting at the time. The song is occasionally credited to better-known writers; Derry Lindsay and Jackie Smith were relatively unknown Belfast-area songwriters who submitted the song to the Irish national final. The five-country 1970 withdrawal is sometimes described as a boycott against Ireland; it was a protest of the 1969 tiebreak chaos, unrelated to Ireland.