The Voice: Ireland's Seventh Win, the Celtic Peak

MAY 15 1996 · 12:05

Eimear Quinn · "The Voice" · Ireland · 1996 Placement: 1st · Score: 162 · Language: English · Composers: Brendan Graham · Venue: Oslo Spektrum · Host: Oslo, Norway · Type: winner · Broadcast: color crt On May 18, 1996, at the Oslo Spektrum, a young Irish soprano named Eimear Quinn — until then primarily known as a member of the Irish choral ensemble Anúna — stepped forward in a floor-length ivory dress to perform a Brendan Graham composition called 'The Voice.' The song's arrangement drew explicitly on the post-Riverdance Celtic-mystical register: tin whistle, fiddle, choral harmonies, lyrics about an ethereal singing presence that moves across seasons and generations. Quinn's classically-trained soprano sat high over the arrangement with a clarity that made the whole performance feel closer to liturgical music than pop. At the close of voting 'The Voice' had received 162 points, winning Eurovision for Ireland for the seventh time — more than any other country in contest history. The 1996 victory made Ireland winner of four out of five consecutive contests (1992, 1993, 1994, 1996) and made Brendan Graham a two-time Eurovision-winning composer (1994, 1996). The dominance was becoming almost embarrassing; Irish-broadcaster RTÉ was openly nervous about the cost of a fifth host edition, and in subsequent years Ireland would begin deliberately selecting less-competitive entries. Quinn's 1996 moment thus stood at the apex of the Celtic-mystical Eurovision wave and at the peak of Irish contest dominance. Nothing since has matched it. Context Eurovision 1996 was held in Norway following Secret Garden's 1995 win and was notable for having included an audio-only pre-qualifying round that Germany controversially failed, meaning Germany did not compete in the main contest — the only time a founding Eurovision nation has been eliminated in this manner. The mid-1990s Eurovision was in a transitional phase between the strict language-rule era of earlier decades and the loosening that would come in 1999. 'The Voice' was Brendan Graham's second Eurovision winning composition in three years after 'Rock 'n' Roll Kids,' making him one of the contest's most successful composers of the decade. Eimear Quinn had been a member of Anúna, the choral ensemble that had performed with Riverdance in 1994, which gave her 1996 performance a direct lineage to the Celtic-mystical wave the interval act had launched. Legacy Ireland's seventh Eurovision win in 1996 remains the contest's all-time record — no country has won more. The four-in-five streak from 1992 to 1996 is similarly unmatched. After 1996 Ireland's Eurovision performance declined sharply, with only occasional top-ten finishes across the subsequent three decades; the contest's expansion to include Eastern European nations and the introduction of televoting in 1998 reshaped the voting math in ways that no longer favored Irish balladeering. Eimear Quinn pursued a classical and Celtic-crossover career; Brendan Graham continued composing and released work that included Celine Dion's recording of 'You Raise Me Up' (a later song Graham did not write but is frequently misattributed to). 'The Voice' remains widely cited in discussions of Eurovision's Celtic-mystical moment — a register that had arguably peaked with Riverdance and was already fading when Quinn won. Mythology Eimear Quinn is sometimes described as the solo lead of Anúna; she was a member, not the lead. The four-in-five Irish streak is often reported as 'five in six,' incorporating the 1987 Johnny Logan win; the continuous-era dominance is specifically 1992-1996. Brendan Graham is occasionally credited as the composer of Celine Dion's 'You Raise Me Up'; that song was written by Rolf Løvland and Brendan Graham is not a co-author.