Rejected Cypriot Eurovision entry wins glory for Greece

CYPRIOT singer Marlain Angelidou has won an international music festival by representing Greece with ‘Rejection’, a song that ironically was rejected for representing Cyprus in the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest.

On August 29 and 30, the city of Pancevo in Serbia hosted the second International Pop Music Festival ‘Pan Music’.

On the first day, Marlain stormed through the semi-final phase of the contest, her performance earning rapturous applause from the audience.

The final took place on Saturday August 30 with the participation of the international artists together with the domestic artists selected the previous day.

Marlain represented Greece with ‘Rejection’ and was the winner of the competition.

She took two awards – for best performance of an international artist and for best song.

The voting of the Festival Jury was unanimous.

This very song appeared during the Cypriot National Final for the Eurovision Song Contest 2008 organised by CyBC, and was not selected despite the fact that the jury had chosen ‘Rejection’ to represent Cyprus. At the end of the jury votes, Marlain led the score with 48 points, ahead of the 32 points scored by the eventual winner Evdokia Kadi and her song ‘Femme Fatale’.

The televoting results revealed Kadi as the clear winner, with Marlain gaining the fifth place in viewer preferences. ‘Femme Fatale’ failed to make the Eurovision Belgrade Final in 2008.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.