Introduction

The unlucky hand of the Dutch regarding the choice of Eurovision entries in the last seven years is bitter. Last year in Düsseldorf 3JS with “Je vecht nooit alleen” came last in one of the semi finals. Therefore the producing company TROS initiated a bright show with six hopeful candidates. There has been televoting plus a jury out of experts as well as an international “jury” with no voting rights, initiated to give a trend what could succeed internationally. There have been three duels with three winners in a super final.

At the end Joan Franka won with a big surprise, as there the other two candidates seem to be the winners. Joan had the most striking outfit wearing a costume of an American Indian with a guitar. The song “You and me” is a solid country song with a nice refrain which gets better the more you listen to it, nothing typical Dutch, more American Road song. The Dutch TV acclaimed another viewing record with 2.3 million spectators, and the Dutch people seem to stand strongly behind this entry and believe this could even win.

History

Since the first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956 the Netherlands participate on a more or less regular basis. There have been certain years when the Dutch broadcaster NOS decided to withdraw. The Netherlands had four victories in history: “Net Als Toen” by Corry Brokken in 1957, “Een Beetje” by Teddy Scholten in 1959, “De Troubadour” by Lenny Kuhr in 1969, “Ding-A-Dong” by Teach-In in 1975.

Over the years there were quite a lot top 10 places. The most recent success were “Rechtop In De Wind” by March in 1987 (5^th), “Vrede” by Ruth Jacott in 1993 (6^th) and “Hemel en Aarde” in 1998 (4^th). Unfortunately, the Netherlands were not very lucky with qualifying for the final; this only happened once out of eight times.

It seems that the Dutch people lose a bit of interest as the Netherlands haven’t been seen in the grand final for such a long time and the last victory is more than 30 years ago.