Setting a ridiculous challenge

It's early. Well, earlier than I would normally get up, get dressed and start writing. The wind is blowing hard, rain hitting the window pane. The prospect of setting out in that weather is a grim thought.

Fortunately, I have a distraction. Late last night I started doing a spot of research. Referring to a well thumbed copy of John Kennedy O'Connor 50 Years Eurovision Song Contest The Official History (yes, the title really is that long) I started counting up the number of Eurovision songs there had ever been.

In truth I was in fact only able to count all the songs from the Contest's inception in 1956 up until 2004. The remaining contests (2005 up until the present day) aren't documented in this reasonably sized tome.

If I counted correctly - and forgive me, it was late, there is a chance I might have double counted some songs or missed some off with the blunt end of my pencil - there have been an astonishing 913 songs showcased in the Eurovision Song Contest over the years.

I turned to my partner in bed beside me and communicated my surprise. Nothing but snores emanated from his side of the bed.

I've always been strangely intrigued by the contest. As a small boy I'd position myself in front of the TV screen, scoresheet on my right hand side, comments sheet on my left hand side, a collection of sharpened pencils in the middle and and a pencil sharpener should it become necessary during the live TV show.

Eurovision was an event for me and, twenty odd years later as I started researching a book about the annual music fest which I still haven't got around to writing, I realised it was for thousands of others too.

If there was one message which rung out loud and clear during those two or three years of research it was that contrary to what my own friends reckoned about my knowledge of the Eurovision, there were many, many others who had considerably more knowledge about it than I did.

"Call yourself a fan of the Eurovision and you can't recall who sang for Portugal in 1972?" an acquaintance drip-fed on Eurovision minutae often berates me. "No," I reply, "it was the year I was born. I don't remember very much." Such defences have no weight in the Eurovision world.

It was with this in mind that I started counting up just how many of the songs listed at the end of John Kennedy O'Connor's book I actually knew from the index list. Considering my love of the Contest it was a shamefully embarrassing number.

So it is I set myself the challenge to increase the paltry total of 208 songs I know by setting about listening to every single Eurovision song ever performed in a contest and blogging about it here.

It seems like a simple task - a good deal more simple than when I began researching the phantom Eurovision book I was going to write. Five years ago youTube hadn't been started, the original Napster been declared bankrupt and there was hardly anything in written form about the Contest. Five years later there's an enormous resource available on the internet. Fans upload favourite clips from contests gone by, writers who are able to finish books they started researching provide useful historical resources and blogging systems offers people like me with an opinion a relatively straightforward way of getting stuff on the web.

Eurovision is littered with fine examples of concise pop songs. Every song which competes in the show has to conform to a 3 minute rule if only to keep the live television broadcast down to a realistic timeframe. Within that 3 minute constraint pop composers have demonstrated great ingenuity, shameless imitation and way too many key changes just to secure a vote from a jury or a telephone vote from a tv-viewer.

All of these efforts are nearly lost on those who pour scorn on the Eurovision year in year out. The Eurovision song is bubblegum pop, formed out of necessity to fill the time of a live TV show which reputedly brings Europe together for one night of the year. The idea of exploring all of those efforts day in day out strikes me as crazy, exciting and, possibly, just a little bit weird too. It's going to be Christmas Day every day. No wonder there's a smile on my face as I write this.

Don't expect great long posts (they'll never be as long as this, I promise) or great historical facts. Instead look on this as your daily Eurovision diet, a diet guaranteed to get you up and about, charged with enthusiasm and possibly a little bit happier than you were before you clicked on the play button.

The songs appear in no particular order. If there's video available, it will be available in the post. If I haven't been able to find an audio version the song will be listed in the archive. Each posting will have a tag with the year it was performed, the artist it was performed by and the country it represented.

I can hardly wait.