Eurovision is back in its spiritual home. Here’s your guide to an ABBA-infused, lasagne-obsessed song contest

Fifty years ago, two Swedish married couples went on the most consequential double date in music history, changing pop for good at the Eurovision Song Contest.

Fifty years ago, two Swedish married couples went on the most consequential double date in music history, changing pop for good at the Eurovision Song Contest. True, the bar wasn’t too high. 1974 was also the year that Paul Anka topped charts with “(You’re) Having My Baby,” a track that won a 2006 CNN survey of the worst songs of all time. But Abba – then still available in human form – have remained Eurovision’s de facto godparents as the event grew into the merriest, most colorful musical competition in the world. Now, 50 years on from their “Waterloo” breakout, the contest is back in Sweden, its spiritual home, after Loreen won the country’s seventh crown last May – becoming the first woman to win the competition twice. All these storylines coming together must be fate; incontrovertible proof that God is a Eurovision fan. You couldn’t have written it any better, right Loreen? “People are like ‘OK, Sweden is the spiritual home of Eurovision’ – I see Eurovision as this moving entity,” she tells CNN. “Who cares about the place?”