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14 interesting Eurovision facts

Excitement is building and parties are being planned… It is Eurovision time again! Yay! The 63rd annual Eurovision Song Contest takes place in Lisbon from the 8th May. It is the first time that the famous song contest has taken place in Portugal thanks to their 2017 victory with the song “Amar pelos dois” performed by Salvador Sobral. Their song holds the record of most points won in a Grand Final with a record breaking 758 points.

The final will be televised on Saturday 12th May. The Eurovision song contest has been running for 63 years and has seen almost 1500 songs by 50 countries and hundreds of hours of live television. It has an average television audience of 125 million and it is the largest music show in the world.

The UK voted the song “Storm” sung by SuRie as their entry for this years show. Real name Susanna Marie started writing songs at the age of 12. She has performed in iconic British venues such as The Royal Albert Hall and St Paul’s Cathedral and at venues around the world including St Mark’s Basilica in Venice. She is no stranger to Eurovision where she performed as a backing singer for Belgium’s Loic Nottet in 2015 and she was Musical Director for Blanche’s City Lights (Belgian entry) in 2017.

Eurovision

Here are 14 Eurovision facts that are interesting even to the Eurovision hater! You could even make them into a quiz for guests at your Eurovision party.

  1. Riverdance was first performed during the interval act of Eurovision Song Contest 1994. One of the most popular interval acts in the history of the contest
  2. Eurovision Song Contest is broadcast across five continents
  3. Norway won the contest in 1995 with the song “Nocturne”. It contained only 24 words accompanied by long violin solos
  4. Norway has ended last nine times! They came last in 1963, 1969, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1981, 1990, 1997 and 2001
  5. The longest running losers are the Cypriots, having never made the top four
  6. All Eurovision songs must not be longer than three minutes.
  7. In 2015 Finland’s song “Aina Mun Pitää” only runs for 1 minute and 27 seconds. The shortest song in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest. They did not reach the final.
  8. United Kingdom gave zero points to ABBA in 1974. ABBA is the most successful Eurovision Song Contest winner. The Swedish pop band won the contest in 1974 and has enjoyed phenomenal success ever since, despite officially splitting up in 1983.Eurovision
  9. The Eurovision Song Contest started with just seven participating countries in 1956
  10. With seven victories, Ireland is the most successful country at the contest. Sweden won the contest six times, while Luxembourg, France and the United Kingdom won five times.
  11. Johnny Logan won the Eurovision Song Contest three times. In 1980 and 1987 he represented Ireland as performer and won both times, with Hold Me Now and What’s Another Year, in 1992 he wrote Linda Martin’s winning entry Why Me?
  12. The most covered Eurovision Song Contest song is Domenico Mudugno‘s “Nel Blu Di Pinto Di Blu”, also known as “Volare”. The song has been covered by famous stars such as Dean Martin, Cliff Richard, David Bowie and many more.
  13. The rules concerning the language of the entries have been changed several times. In the past, the Contest’s organizers have sometimes compelled countries to only sing in their own national languages, but since 1999 no such restriction has existed. Full details of the rule changes can be found here
  14. The entry which used the most languages was “It’s just a game” sung by the Bendik Singers for Norway in 1973. It was performed in English and French with some lyrics in Spanish, Italian, Dutch, German, Irish, Serbo-Croatian, Hebrew, Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian.