Eurovision Song Contest 1958 - Alice Babs

"Lilla stjärna" (; literally "Little star") is song performed by Alice Babs with music composed by Åke Gerhard and Swedish lyrics written by . It in the Eurovision Song Contest 1958, held in

Hilversum Hilversum () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Holland, Netherlands. Located in the heart of the Gooi, it is ...

. It was Sweden's first song in the contest, and the first time that the

Swedish language Swedish ( ) is a North Germanic languages, North Germanic language from the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family, spoken predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland. It has at least 10 million native speakers, making it the G ...

was performed in Eurovision.

Background

Selection

Sveriges Radio Sveriges Radio Aktiebolag, AB (; "Sweden's Radio") is Sweden's national publicly funded radio programming, radio broadcaster. Sveriges Radio is a public limited company, owned by an independent foundation, previously funded through a television ...

(SR) internally selected Alice Babs as its performer for the of the Eurovision Song Contest, and the song "Samma stjärnor lysa för oss två" as the in the contest. This was the source of some controversy between Babs and the composer of the song, Åke Gerhard; as neither she nor SR approved the lyrics and commissioned journalist and lyricist –at the time an employee of Sveriges Radio TV– to rewrite the song as well as providing it with a new title "Lilla stjärna", without the knowledge or approval of Gerhard. As a result of this, Gerhard in turn would not allow Babs to make a studio recording of what legally still was his work, albeit in considerably rewritten form. The only existing audio recording of "Lilla stjärna" is consequently sourced from the television footage of Babs' live performance at Eurovision, which had its first commercial release as part of the Swedish CD compilation ''Rätt Låt Vann?! – Vinnarna'' in 1994.

Eurovision

On 12 March 1958, the Eurovision Song Contest was held at AVRO Studios in

hosted by (NTS), and broadcast live throughout the continent. Dressed in the Leksand national costume, Babs performed "Lilla stjärna" fifth in the running order on the evening, following 's " Un grand amour" by Solange Berry and preceding 's " Jeg rev et blad ud af min dagbog" by Raquel Rastenni. Dolf van der Linden conducted the live orchestra in the performance of the Swedish entry. At the end of voting, the song received 10 points, placing fourth in a field of ten. It was succeeded as Swedish representative at the by " Augustin" by Brita Borg.

Legacy

The name of John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel '' Lilla stjärna'' is taken from the song title.Himmelska toner och ond bråd död
DN article by Pontus Dahlman, 22 May 2010.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lilla stjarna Eurovision songs of 1958 Eurovision songs of Sweden Alice Babs songs 1958 songs Songs written by Åke Gerhard