By Andrew Adamides
CYPRUS fate in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest is still in the balance, CyBC’s Marios Skordis told the Cyprus Mailyesterday.
The country is still reeling from the shock of this year’s entry Thane Erotascoming in second from last in Saturday’s 1999 Eurovision, which took place in Jerusalem. Thane Erotasreceived just two points overall, given by Britain. Only Spain’s entry ranked lower, winning just a single point.
The result is particularly disappointing as pre-contest polls on the internet had ranked Thane Erotas, performed by Marlain, as one of the favourites to win the contest.
Skordis said yesterday that Marlain, who has now returned to the UK to complete her studies, was “heartbroken” by the result.
But even though the Cyprus song came in the bottom five, the country may not be bounced from the millennium contest as the organisers decide who to exclude using a complicated system based on point scoring.
Skordis says that, according to CyBC’s calculations, Cyprus would be included in the 2000 contest, but that Eurovision organisers would not officially inform Cyprus of their decision until September.
It is thought that Thane Erotas’ downfall was largely due to the fact that it was sung in Greek, whereas the winning song was sung in English, although so-called ‘political voting’ may have come into it too. For the first time this year, the contest’s rules were relaxed to allow contestants to enter in any language they wanted. Many, including Sweden, Austria, Iceland and the Netherlands took the English option, resulting in a win for Sweden, whose Charlotte Nilsson romped to victory with her ABBA-esque song Take Me To Your Heaven. After leading the field until midway through the voting, Iceland’s Selma Bjornsdottir came in second with her bubbly All Out of Luck, while Germany’s Surpriz, an immigrant Turkish group who sang their folksy song Journey to Jerusalemin several languages (Turkish, German, English and Hebrew), came third.
This is the fourth time Sweden has won the contest: the first and best- known occasion occurred in 1974, when ABBA won with Waterloo. In the ‘eighties, Sweden won twice, first when boy band The Herreys sang the infamous Diggi-Loo, Diggi-Ley, and then later in the decade when Carola performed Captured by a Love Storm.
Cyprus was not the only country tipped for the top to flop badly on the night, with Austria and several of the Scandinavian countries also receiving fewer points than expected.
As to what Cyprus would do about its entry next year, if it is allowed to enter, Skordis said there were several options, including commissioning a well-known composer to put together a song or commissioning several songs and allowing the public to vote for them via televoting.
“There has to be a very serious meeting about it,” he said, adding it was likely that Cyprus too would next enter with a song in English.
On a more positive note, he said the televoting had gone well this year, with no repeat of last year’s fiasco when the lines jammed and a back-up jury had to be brought in. All in all, around 15,000 calls had been logged.
Surprisingly, Skordis added that there had been 192 votes for the Turkish entry, more than were received by Portugal. The top songs as voted for by the Cypriot public received between 250 and 800 votes each.
This year’s contest also courted controversy amongst ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel, when its second and final rehearsal ran over into the Jewish Sabbath. Right-wing religious leaders had already threatened to disrupt the contest because Israel’s right to hold the contest was won in 1998 by Dana International, a transsexual whom the hard-liners have blasted as an abomination.
Dana won with her song Divaand returned this year to provide the intermission act: a rendering of Stevie Wonder’s Freeintermingled with a traditional Jewish hymn, which also angered Jewish leaders.
