L'oiseau et l'enfant: The Last French Eurovision Win

MAY 15 1977 · 12:00

Marie Myriam · "L'oiseau et l'enfant" · France · 1977 Placement: 1st · Language: French · Composers: Jean-Paul Cara, Joe Gracy · Venue: Wembley Conference Centre · Host: London, United Kingdom · Type: winner · Broadcast: color crt On May 7, 1977, at the Wembley Conference Centre in north-west London, a 20-year-old Portuguese-born French singer named Marie Myriam performed 'L'oiseau et l'enfant' — 'The Bird and the Child' — a soaring, pastoral chanson whose lyric braided a child's fable about a bird, the sea, the sky, and the earth into a gentle plea for peace and unity. The arrangement, by Jean-Paul Cara, was lush and string-driven, rising in waves behind Myriam's clear, lyric soprano. The 1977 contest had been delayed by several weeks due to a BBC technicians' strike, the only time a Eurovision final has been postponed for industrial action. Eighteen countries competed. Myriam won with 136 points, giving France its fifth Eurovision victory. The win would turn out to be France's last. No French entry has won in the forty-plus years since — a drought that has become one of Eurovision's most discussed long-running narratives, a kind of karmic inversion of France's early dominance of the contest. Context Eurovision 1977 sat at an awkward stylistic juncture: disco was rewiring European pop, ABBA had redefined what a Eurovision career could be, and the chanson tradition that had produced most French winners was visibly ageing. Myriam's entry was unapologetically traditional — a through-composed French chanson with no disco elements, no rock arrangement, no attempt to modernise. It was also the last Eurovision final in which the language rule — each country had to perform in one of its national languages — was in effect; the rule was relaxed in 1999. The 1977 edition was broadcast in colour and captured in relatively strong archival condition. Wembley Conference Centre was a functional, modernist hall, newly completed in 1976. Legacy Marie Myriam had a modest recording career in France after 1977, working consistently but never approaching Eurovision-scale visibility again. 'L'oiseau et l'enfant' became a French cultural standard — a reliable schoolroom and television choir piece — and has been recorded in numerous language versions. The song's afterlife has been significantly boosted by the fact that France has not won since: every discussion of the French Eurovision drought returns to Myriam, and every near-miss French entry of recent decades (Barbara Pravi, 2021, second place) has been measured against 1977. France remains the best-scoring never-recently-winning major country in the contest's modern era. Mythology The 1977 win is sometimes described as France's fourth victory — it was the fifth, following 1958, 1960, 1962, 1969. Myriam's nationality is sometimes given simply as French, which understates the Portuguese-born background that is part of the standard Marie Myriam biography. The BBC technicians' strike is occasionally cited as having affected the contest itself (staging, etc.); it primarily delayed the date.