Eurovision Through the Years: 2000


  Eurovision Through the Years – In this new series I will (in irregular time intervals and non-chronologically) present a year of the Eurovision Song Contest. We will look at songs and singers, hosts, gossip, interesting stories and funny incidents. We already recaped the first Song Contest in 1956. Today we will look at the last contest held in Sweden: Stockholm 2000. You can find all reviews we already published here: Eurovision Through the Years: The (Hi)Story.

The Eurovision Song Contest 2000 marked several milestones in Eurovision history. It was, of course, the first contest of the new millennium, but also the first contest to be broadcast on the Internet (Today hundreds of thousands of fans in over 140 countries watch the contest that way every year). It was also held in front of the biggest live audience a Eurovision Song Contest had ever had at that time: The Globen Arena in Stockholm could seat 16,000 spectators. It was also the first year a compilation CD of all entries was released.

It was the 45th Eurovision Song Contest and the fourth one to be held in Sweden (second in Stockholm).  The logo for the contest, a pair of open mouth lips, was chosen by SVT, and was described by its designers as “a sensual, yet stylistically pure mouth representing song, dialogue and speech.”  This implicit motto of the contest was adopted by hosts Kattis Ahlström and Anders Lundin, who welcome the television viewers in a mix of languages aka „ Spasiba et Schalom to Jerusalem that presenter uns with such a magnifico espectaculo dernier year – last ano”     Kattis also mentioned the “100 million viewers” which seemingly unsettled Anders a bit.

Slovakia, Greece and Hungary decided not to compete for financial reasons. The countries with the five lowest average scores over the previous five contests who had also participated in 1999, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal and Slovenia were excluded meaning that five countries could return. These countries were: Finland, Macedonia, Romania, Russia and Switzerland. Latvia also joined contest as the only country to debut.

The postcards involved Swedish themes and incorporated the respective nation in some respect.

The evening started with a provocation. The Israeli group “Ping Pong” sang their song, or rather message underlined with beats, “Be happy” mostly off-key and in clothes reminiscent of the century that had just passed. They waved Israeli and Syrian flags which they wanted to be seen as a message of peace (The two countries were in a state of war). Additionally the two male singers kissed for a very brief moment. All that did not impress Europe too much. Israel ended in 22nd  place at the end of the night.  The performance was voted one of the worst in Eurovision history by our readers.

Linda  from the Netherlands seemingly wanted to press every cliché about Eurovision into the three minutes she had. She started off with a gigantic white and black crinoline dress from which, after the intro of the song, two well-built male dancers in tight glittery shirts appeared. Nina herself resembled a mirror ball after the crinoline dress was lifted off of her. The song was a simple dance song with some Caribbean (?) influences. Naturally the two male dancers had to lose the tight shirts and show their nipples on prime time television later on. Seen as one of the favorites, the visually exuberant presentation may have turned away some voters: 13th place.

The United Kingdom was represented by Nikki French, who had achieved international fame with a cover of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total eclipse of the heart”. Her song “Don’t play that song again” was generic Euro pop and many jurors and viewers that night seemed to agree with the title of the song. It reached 16th place which was the UK’s worst showing ever at that time. Apart from the song, the dance moves (two steps to the left, two steps to the right, raise your hands) and the incompatibility of her Thatcherite hairstyle and Britney Spears belly-free purple shirt may have turned off some potential voters.

The bookie’s favorite that year was Estonia.Once in a lifetime” was a nice and catchy song but maybe Ines felt the pressure of being the hot favorite upon her. In her green suite with a green cowboy hat she did seemed very nervous, did not smile at all and moved very statically which did not really fit the song. Her necklace was reminiscent of that tripe in Thailand (or was it Burma?) you see on tele so often. As measured by the high hopes before the contest, Ines may have been a bit disappointed with her 4th place, which nevertheless was Estonia’s best place to that point.

There was a time when Francophone entries dominated Eurovision, in 2000 the negative trend concerning the results of French entries reached its low-point. The two only entries performed in the French language came last and second to last. Sofia Mestari performed an easy-listening song for France. „On aura le ciel“ seems like a nice song to me and I don’t really know what went wrong.  Belgium came last with only 2 points for the anthemic “L’envie de vivre”. Nathalie Sorce performed the powerful song in a wedding-like dress, the “Com’on vivre sans amour” didn’t really fit the song, though.

Romania was represented by the group Taxi that year. A beautiful pan flute part was the highlight of the song. Easy-listening lounge-like music and a singer with colored glasses were apparently not enough to impress Europe: 17th place was the result. Maybe the lead singer’s thick accent that made most of the lyrics incomprehensible was also a reason. At least the main topic of the song was clear “The Moon”.

Malta sent a song that could have easily been part of the “Lilo and Stich” or “Tarzan” Disney soundtrack. Lead singer Claudette Pace had something of an early Chiara, in bodily proportions that is. The song has a positive feel and puts a smile on your face. It also includes one sentence in Maltese, the first time for 28 years the language appeared on a Eurovision stage.  8th place was the result at the end of the evening.

Norway sent happy Scandinavian pop. The song “My heart goes boom” was presented by a three member girl group dressed entirely in black and purple. The lyrics describe the first time a young woman sees her lover. Apparently her heart “boomed” so much that she couldn’t even hold on to her ice cream: “You were standing in the shadows, looking quite impossible/I lost my mind and popsicle“. 11th place was the respectable result for the happy pop song.

The Russian entry “Solo” was written by two Americans and performed by UK resident Alsou. The song was thus closer to the likes of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera in sound and performance than to the Russian soul. Europe loved the song and voted it into second place. They presented themselves as bad losers (or better bad runner-ups) however: The Russian delegation petitioned for the winning Olsen Brothers to be disqualified, after they had used a vocoder to give Jørgen Olsen an electronic sound to his voice during one of the verses of their performance. This issue was rejected by the EBU.

Cyprus was represented by Christina Argyri and Alexandros Panayi. Panayi had previously represented Cyprus at the 1995 Contest with “Sti Fotia”. The two performed a dramatic love duet in Greek and Italian. It was the first time the country did not entirely perform in Greek. Maybe “Nomiza” was too peculiar and didn’t have enough melody, because in the end 8 points were only enough for a 21st place and Cyprus could not participate the next year.

The clothes Iceland’s representatives wore were reminiscent of ravers at a trance parade. Surprisingly, they sang a soft pop song with very little trance and confessed their love for each other. The song came 12th.

Serafín Zubiri had already represented Spain in 1992 coming 14th. This time his song “Colgado de un sueño“ only came 18th. The blind singer and pianist accompanied himself on the piano and wore a black suit and dark glasses. His song was probably not catchy enough to make an impact.

After the successful joke entry by Guildo Horn had reanimated interest in the contest in Germany, the composer of the latter’s song, Stefan Raab, decided to enter the competition himself. The title of the song is baby talk in German and was inspired by a clip of an old lady asking her dog who had just pooped “Wadde hadde dude da” (What do you have there?). The performance included light effects, young ladies losing more and more of their clothes throughout the song, plateau shoes and sparkling suits. The “super sack of German television” came 5th mostly due to points from neighboring countries, where he was also popular.

Switzerland was represented by Jane Bogaert with the ballad “La vita cos’è?”  (What is life?). The song was a slow ballad with a climatic chorus. She had prominent support: Al Bano, the Italian representative of 1976 and 1985 was one of her backing singers. Bogaert wore a lilac, sleeveless gown for her performance. She only came 20th with 14 points.

Goran Karan represented Croatia with the ethnic rock ballad “Kad zaspu anđeli” (“When angels fall asleep”). Karan wanted to perform the song in English but was not allowed to due to a public vote. During the entire performance a performer wrapped in a black cloth formed different kinds of sculptures, at times resembling the Death Eaters from Harry Potter. At the end of the performance, however, she revealed herself to be a beautiful angelic woman dressed in white, at the sight of which Goran could seemingly only fall to his knees. Europe liked the second Croatian transformation from ugly dumpling to swan (remember 1998?) and the song came 9th with 70 points.

The home entry from Sweden was the song “The Spirits Are Calling My Name”. A pop song with ethnic elements, the entry speaks of the efforts of indigenous cultures to protect their cultural heritage: “Let me be the native son with freedom in my heart” Roger Pontare wore a Sami costume associated with the indigenous population of Lapland in northern Sweden. He was additionally accompanied by an Indian dancer, a Thule Eskimo and a Norwegian Sami. The song came 7th with 88 points, among them 12 from Turkey.

The four girls of XXL representing Macedonia, wore tight multicolored clothes and danced in front of graphics of gigantic mirrored balls. They told a man that they love him 100%. In doing that, they sounded off key for most of the song and could not harmonize. That and  the weak song added up to an unsatisfying result: 15th place for Macedonia and thus no participation in 2001.

Nina Åström performed her ballad „A Little Bit“ for Finland, accompanied by a violinist, two backings and a guitarist. The song deals with the feeling of love, one has towards one’s place of birth, regardless of where it might be. It can be qualified as easy-listening.  The song was chosen in the Finnish selection due to the jury vote over Nightwish’s “Sleepwalker” even though Nightwish had won the televote. For many fans this is one of the biggest missed opportunities for a country. Nina Aström could only continue the poor results for Finland, coming 18th.

Latvia made its spectacular debut on the Eurovision stage with the band Brainstorm: The song “My Star” came third, which was the second best debut result at that time. The lead singer Renārs Kaupers (who also wrote and composed the song) apparently persuaded many people with his eccentric dance moves and enthusiastic performance. The song was often compared to Brit pop efforts by bands like Oasis.

Turkey sent another ethnic entry. Pınar Ayhan performed her song in English and Turkish accompanied by two guitars and an accordion player. Some of the guitar passages sound quite Spanish to my ears. “Yorgunum anla” (I’m weary) did much better than similar Turkish entries, coming 10th. The introduction of televoting now seemingly favored Turkey. They got high marks from France and Germany but also from the Dutch jury.

Ireland did not change the formula that had made them the most successful Eurovision nation: They sent yet another traditional Irish ballad. The song “Millennium of love” performed by Eamonn Toal (who seems to be related to Michael Bolton) was dripping with sentimentality and spoke of the hope inspired by the new millennium: “Celebrate the new millennium of love, where our footprints leave a harvest for the children”. Even though, it was even dubbed “Millennium Of Cheese” by critics in Ireland, it did much better than many expected: Performed with fervency and with burning candles as a backdrop it came 6th and achieved more points than the following five Irish entries combined.

Austria had the honor of performing last on the night. The Rounder Girls (I shall not be inclined to relate the band name to the bodily volume of the three ladies) performed the up-tempo song “All to you” in long black dresses. The “girls” from Vienna, London and New York did their best to add value to the bland song with a slick dance routine and good vocals. In the end they came 14th and Austria was not eligible to enter the contest the following year.

The surprise winners of the evening were two brothers from Denmark. They performed a catchy ballad in black suits, accompanying themselves with guitars. Their advanced age and the fact that they sang about the beauty of a woman which increases with her age (The original title of the song in Danish was “Smuk som et stjerneskud” – “Beautiful as a shooting star”) seemed to speak against the song doing well. However, the Olsen Brothers performed with such enthusiasm and ease that they positively stood out from the competition and looked fresher than all of their much younger competitors. The audience clapped along from the very beginning and Denmark dominated the voting from the very beginning as well. The song became a hit in Sweden, Norway, Germany and Austria.

The interval act/movieOnce upon a time Europe was covered in ice” included impressions from all participating countries: Weddings, music, drinking, dancing, soccer fans and more. The movie was directed, composed and edited by Johan Söderberg and produced by John Nordling. On stage were violinist Caroline Lundgren, drummer Strängnäs Trumkorps plus street musicians from Stockholm and dancers from the Bounce Street Dance Company.

Due to the Enschede fireworks disaster, the Dutch national broadcaster NOS decided to take the show off the air half way through. Later, NOS declared that it was both for practical reasons as well as because they found it “inappropriate to broadcast a light entertainment programme on the night of such a catastrophic event”. The Dutch votes were thus decided by a jury.

You can watch the entire contest here:

Here is the full scoreboard:

Place Country Artist Song Points
 1  Denmark  Olsen Brothers  Fly on the Wings of Love  195
 2    Russia  Alsou  Solo  155
 3    Latvia  Brainstorm  My Star  136
 4    Estonia  Ines  Once in a Lifetime  98
 5    Germany  Stefan Raab  Wadde hadde dudde da?  96
 6    Ireland  Eamonn Toal  Millennium of Love  92
 7    Sweden  Roger Pontare  When Spirits Are Calling  My Name  88
 8    Malta  Claudette Pace  Desire  73
 9    Croatia  Goran Karan  Kad zaspu andeli  70
 10    Turkey  Pinar Ayhan & The SOS  Yorgunum Anla  59
 11    Norway  Charmed  My Heart Goes Boom  57
 12    Iceland  August & Telma  Tell Me!  45
 13    Netherlands  Linda Wagenmakers  No Goodbyes  40
 14    Austria  The Rounder Girls  All To You  34
 15    Macedonia  XXL  100% te ljubam  29
 16    United Kingdom  Nikki French  Don’t Play That Song Again  28
 17    Romania  Taxi  The Moon  25
 18    Spain  Serfín Zubiri  Colgado de un sueno  18
 18    Finland  Nina Âström  A Little Bit  18
 20    Switzerland  Jane Bogaert  La Vita Cos’è?  14
 21    Cyprus  Voice  Nomiza  8
 22    Israel  Ping Pong  Sameyakh (Be Happy)  7
 23    France  Sofia Mestari  On aura le ciel  5
 24    Belgium  Nathalie Sorce  Envie de vivre  2

It was the second Danish win. Russia, Latvia and Estonia achieved their best results ever. Germany reached the Top 5 for the second year in a row. The UK and France achieved their worst ever results. For Belgium it was the 8th last place.

Inspirations = wikipedia, Klaus Berg ogae.de – ESC Geschichte(n)

21 thoughts on “Eurovision Through the Years: 2000

  1. 2000 was actually a very good contest song – wise..I still prefer 1999 – one of my favourite editions ever or at least from what I can remember and reviewed so far – but there were many good songs here and one of the last times up to 2009 that the winner was in my personal top 3 or top 5. “Fly on the wings of love” is such a melodic and honest song..It achieves a lot through simplicity and I truly consider it one of the masterpieces the contest has offered.
    Other highlights : Russia (with my favourite ever Russian entry – not a masterpiece and with an unfortunate stage presentation but such a passionate song), Netherlands (I don’t care about the cliches of the presentation – lovely song. The name of the singer btw is LINDA not NINA), Estonia, Ireland and to a lesser extent Austria, Switzerland, France, Norway (I really liked it although again not a masterpiece) and probably Croatia mainly due to the great stage presentation though..
    The unfortunate ones : Germany (Stefan Raab works miracles when he is backstage – keep it that way please !), FYR Macedonia, Sweden (eyes are bleeding – ears are somehow better), Latvia (This song still irritates me to an umatchable level plus the creepy singer..I find it rather silly as a whole..) and of course we have…Israel..The pantheon of the notorious esc moments has opened its doors wide to welcome this..effort..It’s bad to a dangerously addictive level.

  2. That will be a very interesting series of articles.I have to revisit the 2000 edition.I only remember the top-3,Cyprus,Germany and strangely The rounder girls…:)

  3. Honestly, I think “Fly on the wings of love” is the best ESC winner since 2000, and certainly a well-deserved one… However, I can’t really say it was a good contest result-wise, with Raab’s horrible song coming 5th…

    BTW, this is a nice series, looking forward to reading your next article :)

  4. I would also like to mention the postcards of that year, which I found very funny. Especially those from Estonia, Croatia, Germany and Iceland.

    One thing that didn’t work though, was that stupid idea to give the audience Swedish flags to wave with. What they missed was that the flag was only on one side of the paper, which made it look like there was just a lot of white spots among the audience.

  5. I like these series very much; Congratulations ET!
    For me, esc 2000 was one of the best organized editions ever, and the hosts, Kattis Ahlström and Anders Lundin, were along with Anke Engelke in D’dorf, probably the best in eurovision history.

    My favs for esc 2000:
    01.LATVIA: BrainStorm- My Star
    02.CROATIA: Goran Karan- Kada Zaspu Andeli
    03.CYPRUS: Voice- Nomiza
    04.ESTONIA: Ines- Once In A Lifetime
    05.SWEDEN: Roger Pontare- When Spirits Are Calling My Name
    06.Turkey 07.France 08.Netherlands 09.Switzerland 10.Austria
    just missing out: United Kingdom, Denmark
    can’t stand: Germany, Romania

    Overall:
    – my #1 for 2000 is in my all time esc top20, and probably the best pure pop song ever to appear on the eurovision stage
    -Croatia 2000 is my second most fav croatian entry ever
    – “Nomiza”: yet another underrated song from Cyprus.

  6. A very strong contest indeed and Sweden was a great host ! ( Let’s hope the same for 2013 ).
    My 2000 top 10 :
    1) Russia
    2)Latvia
    3)Estonia
    4)Sweden
    5)Romania
    6)Austria
    7)Croatia
    8)Germany :P
    9)Denmark
    10)Iceland
    Just missing out : Netherlands and Cyprus.
    Malta and Ireland once again overrated pfffff….

  7. In the first years (1999-2002) after the abolishment of the language rule the quality decreased dramatically. The ultimate low appeared in 2001 but 2000 was bad enough. Even the results were quite awkward those times although Turkey, Croatia and Sweden (the only good songs) at least gained Top10 placings.
    Thanks god Eastern Europe entered in 2004 and introduced musical and cultural diversity to the contest. Else we still would be forced to listen to dated Europop, English-Swedish schlagerpop and cheese ballads every year.

  8. Latvia 2000 is one of my all-time favourites and did surprisingly well, given it was the first song in it’s style to appear at Eurovision. I had no idea Nightwish tried to represent Finland in 2000 though…

  9. The 2000 contest proved that the innovations introduced the year before had changed the contest for good, and not in a way I will ever approve of. Both song quality and the quality of vocal live performances had already dramatically dropped the year before but in 2000 the contest hit rock bottom and would not recover until the juries were introduced again in 2009.
    There were only few compositins with some musical credibility, and out of the few several were butchered live, first and foremost Estonia and Russia. Of course televoters could not care less about vocal skills and awarded both songs top 5 results. We got one of the lamest and most old-fashioned winning songs ever, and all in all the entries started to care more about spectacular or silly outfits (Netherlands!) than song quality or live singing. The quality entry from France was more or less completely ignored. On the other hand, I liked the hosts and think that the show was very well organised. In my list of all ESCs, 2000 is only in 43rd place.

    The only acts worth remembering are Latvia, Cyprus, Croatia, Turkey and France imo. The rest of the bunch ranged from average to simply abysmal. In studio version Russia, Estonia and Switzerland are good efforts too. And I really like Austria but I would never claim that ‘All to You’ was a particularly strong entry.

  10. I like this new series. Tigarvus ahs already said much about what there is to say about the the first decade of the XXIst century, a mediocre 10 years. Here’s my top 5 for 2000:

    1. Fly on the Wings of Love, The Olsen Brothers, Denmark (Its live rendition was excellent)
    2. On Aura le Ciel, Sofia Mestari, France (the best song on offer)
    3. My Star, Brainstorm, Latvia (quirky and very good song)
    4. La Vita Cos e, Jane Bogaert, Switzerland (delicate and timeless song)
    5. The Moon, Taxi, Romania (the best Romanian song so far)

  11. For me, Eurovision 2000, while definitely all the things that Toggie mentioned in his own response, was a high point in the lowest era of the contest (1999-2003). It is surrounded by two years which I count as among the worst years ever, but for some odd reason, I really like going back and watching it.

    Everything that year felt so quirky and silly that I can’t help but laugh about it and approve of the overall ridiculousness of the contest, something that all the other years in the 1999-2003 time period absolutely FAILED to manage to achieve. It also happened to be the only time between 2000 and 2010 that I actually enjoyed the U.K. entry.

    My top 5 of Eurovision 2000:

    1. ‘All to You’ – The Rounder Girls (Austria)
    2. ‘Desire’ – Claudette Pace (Malta)
    3. ‘Nomiza’ – Voice (Cyprus)
    4. ‘Tell Me!’ – August & Telma (Iceland)
    5. ‘My Star’ – Brainstorm (Latvia)

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.