Eurovision Song Contest 1999

International Convention Center, Jerusalem – host venue of the 1999 contest.

In the run-up to the contest, many speculated that it would not be held in Israel, but would be moved to either Malta or stay at the United Kingdom (the countries that completed the top 3 of the 1998 contest). This came about after major concerns over funding for the event from the Israeli government arose, alongside the opposition from Orthodox Jews that they would attempt to stop the contest from coming to Israel after Dana International won the previous year's contest. This, however, provided no hindrance for IBA or to the organizing team of the event, and the Ussishkin Auditorium at International Convention Center in Jerusalem was selected as the venue for the 44th contest.[1]

Long-standing rules in place for decades were abolished during this contest: rules that each country had to sing in one of their national languages was abolished for the first time since 1977. A majority of the participating countries, fourteen out of twenty-three, chose to sing entirely or partly in English and only eight entirely in their respective national languages; Lithuania, Spain, Croatia, Poland, France, Cyprus, Portugal and Turkey, not counting the United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta, who have English as a national or official language. Furthermore, live music became optional for the first time in the contest's history. IBA took advantage of this and decided to drop the orchestra from the contest as a way to conserve money for the show. This meant that for the first time all entries used backing track during their performances.[2] This caused controversy for Eurovision traditionalists, with two-time winner Johnny Logan criticising the move, describing the event now as "karaoke".[1]

Draw for the order of performances took place on 17 November 1998.[3]

Television news anchor Yigal Ravid, singer and 1992 contestant Dafna Dekel and model/actress Sigal Shachmon presented the show, and it was the first time that three presenters were used to host the contest. Israel's two previous winners, Izhar Cohen, who won in 1978 with "A-Ba-Ni-Bi" and Milk and Honey's Gali Atari who won it the next year with "Hallelujah" attended as spectators.

It was announced in 1999 that, as of the 2000 contest, the four biggest financial contributors to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) – Germany, Spain, France and the United Kingdom – would all be given automatic entry into the contest, regardless of their average scores over the past five years.[1][2]

Latvia had attempted to participate in the contest for the first time, but later withdrew; this gave Hungary a chance to enter the contest, however, Magyar Televízió decided not to take part, allowing Portugal to compete as the 23rd country.[4][2] Lithuania returned to the contest for the first time in five years. The Lithuanian delegation had budget problems to contend with, and so the EBU allowed the Lithuanians to arrive in Israel a day later than everyone else. The first delegation on the other hand, to arrive were Estonia.[2] Russia's Channel One had decided not to broadcast the 1998 contest, in order to allow for a strong comeback in Israel; however, as only countries which had broadcast the previous year's contest were allowed to enter the next year's contest under the rules at the time, Russia was forced to miss another year.[4]

Qualification

In addition the host country, Israel, the 17 countries with the highest average scores between 1994 and 1998 were allowed to take part in the 1999 contest alongside new or returning countries.[5]

Table key

  Automatic qualifier

  Qualifier

  Replacement qualifier

  Withdrew

Calculation of average points to determine qualification for the 1999 contest

Rank	Country	Average	Yearly Point Totals
			1994	1995	1996	1997	1998
1	Ireland	130.60	226	44	162	157	64
2	Israel	126.50		81			172
3	United Kingdom	121.80	63	76	77	227	166
4	Malta	94.40	97	76	68	66	165
5	Norway	83.40	76	148	114	0	79
6	Croatia	74.20	27	91	98	24	131
7[lower-alpha 1]	Sweden	67.40	48	100	100	36	53
8[lower-alpha 1]	Cyprus	67.40	51	79	72	98	37
9	Netherlands	59.25	4		78	5	150
10	Germany	59.25	128	1		22	86
11	Poland	57.00	166	15	31	54	19
12	France	56.80	74	94	18	95	3
13	Turkey	56.00		21	57	121	25
14	Spain	54.00	17	119	17	96	21
15	Estonia	53.50	2		94	82	36
16	Belgium	50.67		8	22		122
17	Slovenia	44.25		84	16	60	17
18	Hungary[lower-alpha 2]	42.00	122	3		39	4
19	Portugal[lower-alpha 2]	41.20	73	5	92	0	36
20	Greece	39.80	44	68	36	39	12
21	Macedonia	16.00					16
22[lower-alpha 3]	Finland	14.00	11		9		22
23[lower-alpha 3]	Slovakia	14.00	15		19		8
24	Switzerland	10.50	15		22	5	0
25	Romania	10.00	14				6

Returning artists

Lead artists

Artist	Country	Previous year(s)
Doris Dragović	Croatia	1986 (for  Yugoslavia)
Evelin Samuel (with Camille)	Estonia	1997 (as backing singer for Maarja-Liis Ilus)
Darja Švajger	Slovenia	1995

Backing performers[7]

Artist	Country	Previous year(s)
Chris and Moira	Malta	1994
Gabriel Forss	Sweden	1997 (as member of Blond)
Stefán Hilmarsson	Iceland	1988 (as member of Beathoven) and 1991 (with Eyjólfur Kristjánsson)
Kenny Lübcke	Denmark	1992 (with Lotte Nilsson)
Linda Williams	Belgium	1981 (for the  Netherlands)

Results

The favourites to win the contest were Iceland's Selma with "All Out of Luck", and Cyprus's Marlain with "Tha 'Ne Erotas", after an internet poll by fans. However, while Iceland finished second to Sweden (the country's best showing in the contest to date), Cyprus failed to inspire televotes, finishing second last with only two points, both from the United Kingdom.[1][2]

The winning song, "Take Me To Your Heaven", had been seen as rather old-fashioned in Sweden, but voters thought differently. It won at a time when ABBA were enjoying a revival in the European charts and the similarities in musical style were noted by the media.[6]

Draw	Country	Artist	Song	Language[8][9]	Place[10]	Points
01	Lithuania	Aistė	"Strazdas"	Samogitian	20	13
02	Belgium	Vanessa Chinitor	"Like the Wind"	English	12	38
03	Spain	Lydia	"No quiero escuchar"	Spanish	23	1
04	Croatia	Doris Dragović	"Marija Magdalena"	Croatian	4	118
05	United Kingdom	Precious	"Say It Again"	English	12	38
06	Slovenia	Darja Švajger	"For a Thousand Years"	English	11	50
07	Turkey	Tuba Önal and Grup Mistik	"Dön Artık"	Turkish	16	21
08	Norway	Stig Van Eijk	"Living My Life Without You"	English	14	35
09	Denmark	Trine Jepsen and Michael Teschl	"This Time I Mean It"	English	8	71
10	France	Nayah	"Je veux donner ma voix"	French	19	14
11	Netherlands	Marlayne	"One Good Reason"	English	8	71
12	Poland	Mietek Szcześniak	"Przytul mnie mocno"	Polish	18	17
13	Iceland	Selma	"All Out of Luck"	English	2	146
14	Cyprus	Marlain	"Tha'nai erotas" (Θα'ναι έρωτας)	Greek	22	2
15	Sweden	Charlotte Nilsson	"Take Me to Your Heaven"	English	1	163
16	Portugal	Rui Bandeira	"Como tudo começou"	Portuguese	21	12
17	Ireland	The Mullans	"When You Need Me"	English	17	18
18	Austria	Bobbie Singer	"Reflection"	English	10	65
19	Israel	Eden	"Yom Huledet (Happy Birthday)" (יום הולדת)	English, Hebrew	5	93
20	Malta	Times Three	"Believe 'n Peace"	English	15	32
21	Germany	Sürpriz	"Reise nach Jerusalem – Kudüs'e Seyahat"	German, Turkish, English[lower-alpha 4]	3	140
22	Bosnia and Herzegovina	Dino and Béatrice	"Putnici"	Bosnian, French	7	86
23	Estonia	Evelin Samuel and Camille	"Diamond of Night"	English	6	90

Each country had a televote, where the top ten most voted-for songs were awarded the 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 points, with the exceptions of Turkey, Lithuania, Ireland and Bosnia and Herzegovina who used juries.[4]

12 points

Below is a summary of all 12 point in the final:

N.	Contestant	Nation(s) giving 12 points
5	Germany	Israel,  Netherlands,  Poland,  Portugal,  Turkey
	Sweden	Bosnia and Herzegovina,  Estonia,  Malta,  Norway,  United Kingdom
3	Iceland	Cyprus,  Denmark,  Sweden
2	Croatia	Slovenia,  Spain
	Slovenia	Croatia,  Ireland
1	Bosnia and Herzegovina	Austria
	Denmark	Iceland
	Ireland	Lithuania
	Netherlands	Belgium
	Portugal	France
	Turkey	Germany

Most countries sent commentators to Jerusalem or commented from their own country, in order to add insight to the participants and, if necessary, the provision of voting information.

Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries

Country	Broadcaster(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
Austria	ORF 2	Andi Knoll	[22]
	FM4	Stermann & Grissemann	[23]
Belgium	VRT TV1	Dutch: André Vermeulen and Bart Peeters	[24]
	RTBF La Une	French: Jean-Pierre Hautier	[25]
	VRT Radio 2	Dutch: Guy De Pré
	RTBF La Première	French: Didier Mélon
Bosnia and Herzegovina	BHTV1	Ismeta Dervoz-Krvavac
Croatia	HRT 1	Aleksandar "Aco" Kostadinov	[26]
	HR2	Draginja Balaš
Cyprus	RIK 1	Evi Papamichail	[17]
	RIK Deftero	Pavlos Pavlou
Denmark	DR1	Keld Heick	[15]
Estonia	ETV	Marko Reikop
France	France 3	Julien Lepers	[25]
Germany	Das Erste	Peter Urban	[27]
	Deutschlandfunk/NDR 2	Thomas Mohr	[28]
Iceland	Sjónvarpið	Gísli Marteinn Baldursson	[29]
Ireland	RTÉ One	Pat Kenny	[30]
	RTÉ Radio 1	Larry Gogan
Israel	Channel 1	No commentator
	Reshet Gimel	Daniel Pe'er
Lithuania	LRT	Darius Užkuraitis
Malta	TVM	Charlo Bonnici
Netherlands	TV2	Willem van Beusekom	[31]
	Radio 2	Daniël Dekker and Hijlco Span
Norway	NRK1	Jostein Pedersen	[32]
	NRK P1	Jon Branæs	[33]
Poland	TVP1	Artur Orzech	[34]
Portugal	RTP1	Rui Unas	[19]
Slovenia	SLO1	Miša Molk
Spain	La Primera	José Luis Uribarri	[35]
Sweden	SVT2	Pekka Heino and Anders Berglund	[18]
	SR P3	Carolina Norén	[36]
Turkey	TRT 1	Gülşah Banda
	TRT Radyo 3	Fatih Orbay
United Kingdom	BBC One	Terry Wogan	[4][37]
	BBC Radio 2	Ken Bruce	[4]

Broadcasters and commentators in non-participating countries

Country	Broadcaster(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
Australia	SBS TV	Unknown
Finland	YLE TV1	Jani Juntunen	[38]
Greece	ET1	Dafni Bokota and Giorgos Ikonomou	[39]
Latvia	LTV1	Unknown	[40]
Macedonia	MTV 1	Ivan Mirčevski
Romania	TVR2	Leonard Miron
Russia	ORT 1	Aleksey Zhuravlev and Tatyana Godunova
Switzerland	SF 2	German: Sandra Studer
	TSR 1	French: Jean-Marc Richard
	TSI 2	Italian: Jonathan Tedesco

A number of controversies occurred before the contest. Two songs selected to compete in Israel were found to be ineligible: Bosnia and Herzegovina's Hari Mata Hari were disqualified after their entry was discovered to have been released in Finland some years previously; Germany's Corinna May was also disqualified after her song was revealed to have been released in 1997 by a different singer.[1][41] Both artists would eventually represent their countries in Eurovision, in 2006 and 2002 respectively.

Croatia's entry, Marija Magdalena, attracted objections from the Norwegian delegation, due to synthesised male vocals being used on the backing track of Doris Dragović's entry. The EBU decided to reduce the country's score by a third for the purpose of calculating its five-year average to determine participation in future contests, though it was decided to leave its placement in the 1999 result unaffected.[1][2]

The interval act was provided by Dana International, who performed a cover of the Stevie Wonder song "Free", which although was a smash hit in Israel at the time, caused some controversy there due to the song's lyrics. Dana International also appeared at the end of the show, handing the winning trophy to Nilsson. After pretending that the trophy was too heavy to lift, she fell to the stage, bringing down the winning composers with her.[1][2] After the encore of the winning entry coming from Sweden, the three presenters re-appeared inviting everyone on stage to sing a rendition of the English version of "Hallelujah", the Israeli winner from the 1979 contest, as a tribute to the victims of the Kosovo War (particularly then-Yugoslavia, which was banned from participation as penalty due this conflict), who were unable to view the contest after bombings destroyed television transmitters.[1]

Eurovision Song Contest: Israel 1999
Compilation album by Eurovision Song Contest
Released	1999
Genre	Pop
Length	58:00
Label	Israel Broadcasting Authority / IMP Records
Eurovision Song Contest chronology
Eurovision Song Contest: Israel 1999 (1999) Eurovision Song Contest: Stockholm 2000 (2000)

Eurovision Song Contest: Israel 1999 is a compilation CD was released in Israel by the host broadcaster and IMP Records. Due to licensing problems, the CD omitted the songs from Poland, Cyprus, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom.[42] Since then, all compilation CDs have featured all the songs.

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