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 Five nations had withdrawn from the 1970 contest in protest of the previous year's chaotic result — Austria, Finland, Norway, Portugal, and Sweden — reducing the field to twelve entries.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.