An Albanese swimming pool, Anna Vissi's soap opera, the Monegasque manual on how to make an ESC song in 3 minutes, Sílvia Night and ... Lordi.

Some years before MTV, the Eurovision Song Contest started giving viewers a first glimpse of each year’s songs with the preview videos. In those early days, they were almost all postcards of the participating countries. This tradition remains until today. Doce for example made their video, in swimsuits, in the sunny beaches of the Algarve. Mary Spiteri, in one of my all time favourite videos, walked around the streets of Malta, always with her purse on her shoulder.... This year we have the beautiful city of Mostar, serving has the perfect stage for the Bosnia&Herzegovina song.
There were also the drama videos: Betty Mensiego in 1979, with her white fur coat. Ami Aspelund's Fantasiaa, also in fur coat... And this year greek, soap opera like, video. How old is Anna Vissi???
Off course, there were also some crazy but modern (for their time) videos in the past. For instance, Jürgen Marcus back in 1976. Or, Tommy Seebach, in 1979, with Disco Tango. Nowadays, videos give us an idea on what the stage performance will be like and also an opportunity to practice each song choreography!!! Some countries don’t even bother to make videos and send the national finals performances. Even if the singers sang out of tune they still send it. The best example of this is the Portuguese video. And then, there are videos that are just simply too good to be truth. Like the Albanese videos of 2004 and 2006 (scary swimming pool), Spain 1994, Portugal 1992 (with Dina dressed has Carmen Miranda), Malta 1992, the Turkish videos with the singers dressed in training suits... And Monaco, big brother, video for La coco-dance. For all these reasons I think the preview videos are a very funny part of the ESC, sometimes ignored by national broadcasters, but a real treasure for the fans. From this year contest my favs are Silvia Night and Lordi, both so mad that they are vintage already.