50 years of Ding-a-Dong (1975): 50 years after triumph in Stockholm

Has it been a long time, has it been a long time, That my little heart cried with its ding dinge dong, Has it been a long time, has it been a long time, In the summer sun it went bim bam bom. Yes, 50 years ago Teach-In won the 1975 Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm with Dinge-dong. Dinge-dong is the Dutch title and Ding-a-dong the English title. The song was written by Dick Bakker (music) with Will Luikinga (95%) and Eddy Ouwens (5% of the lyrics). Do you know the history of this winning song?

Background

Dinge-dong first won at the National Song Festival. In 1975, the selection procedure consisted of first selecting the song and then the artist(s) who could best perform it. Teach-In won this competition against Albert West and Debbie, allowing this band to represent the Netherlands with this song at the Eurovision Song Contest. The draw determined that the Netherlands would open the festival. This time, the Dutch managed to secure first place with a score of 152 points. It became a neck-and-neck race between the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, which had sent The Shadows—the band that had accompanied Cliff Richard in previous years—to Stockholm with "Let Me Be the One," a strong, Beatles-style song. This established band was seen as a major contender: they had already garnered success and fame and possessed extensive performing experience. However, after the British had awarded their 12 points to the Netherlands, a Dutch victory became highly probable. The other countries that gave Teach-In 12 points were Norway, Malta, Israel, Spain, and Sweden. Only after the vote by Sweden, the second-to-last country, was the Netherlands no longer catchable. The Shadows finished in second place with 138 points. The Dutch victory meant that Teach-In not only opened the show but also closed it. At the festival, the band performed the English version of Ding-a-dong, rather than Dinge-dong in Dutch. It was the second time in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest that a winning song was sung in English rather than the national language (the first time had been ABBA's Waterloo the year before). Furthermore, Teach-In also released a German version. Later that same year, two female singers covered the song: Rika Zaraï in French with the title Petit Train, and Füsun Önal in Turkish with the title Söyleyin Arkadaslar.   Teach-In – Ding-a-dong (1975): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI78Bqp6z6g Willem van Kooten of the music publisher already knew in advance that it would score in the top 3. He had already had “Eurovision winner” printed on the printed version. Should Teach-In not win, he could use the excuse that it did not say “Eurovision Song Contest.” Dick Bakker was able to use the proceeds to have a swimming pool built next to his home. Since Dinge-dong, the Netherlands had a winning song again after 44 years in 2019: Arcade by Duncan Laurence.  

Comments

The content of the song differs significantly between the Dutch and English versions. In the Dutch version, the clock in the chorus actually strikes at the passage of time. The song tells the story of a (love) relationship in which the partner stays away for nights on end, while the narrator waits for him or her (“for hours all those nights, I kept waiting for you, first tick-tock and then ding-dang-dong”). The English lyrics, on the other hand, are unremarkable. Festival expert Kennedy O'Connor described this bluntly as follows: “The lyrics of the song were rather ridiculous, with a chorus in which the listener is encouraged to pick a flower every hour and to ‘ding-a-dong, even if your loved one is off, off, off’.” He found the melody, however, to be extraordinarily catchy. The lyrics even led to a dispute between singer Kaspers and Luikinga in 2015. Kaspers found the content of the lyrics too thin and at times incomprehensible, while Luikinga responded laconically. He had been asked at the time to write a winning song, and he had succeeded.  

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Dingedong – the Eurovision hits musical will be exclusively shown at Theater aan het Spui in The Hague on May 10 and 11, 2025. This unique production is an ode to the Eurovision Song Contest! A musical about the road to success, eternal fame, falling and getting back up. Working incredibly hard…and winning:  https://www.dingedong.nl/ From a clown song to the Eurovision winner (AD, March 22, 2025): https://www.ad.nl/songfestival/componist-ding-a-dong-kreeg-tijdens-songfestival-een-pistoolmitrailleur-op-zich-gericht~a281d691/ Previous Eurovision Song Contest blogs: https://www.postzegelblog.nl/tag/eurovisiesongfestival/