#jerusalem 1999

[eurovision-revisited]

1999 Jerusalem - Number 4 - Anna Oxa - "Senza pietà"

What more can you say about Anna Oxa? She's entered the Festival di Sanremo fifteen separate times! Fifteen! The most recent was this year, 2023. She won in 1989 and represented Italy at Eurovision. 1999 was her tenth entry and her second victory with Senza pietà (Without Mercy). Truly a queen.

Senza pietà itself is an interesting song with large serving of gender play at its heart. Anna casts herself as a knight in a fantasy realm, massacring enemies with her sword all in the name of finding love and conquering it without mercy. Oh my! Anna herself is aquiline, honed like her sword in the song, hair slicked back, leather clad, she means business.

Her voice is the star, low and purposeful throughout the verses, soaring to huge heights when the chorus hits. If Italy were in Eurovision this year, this would have been their entry and I'm confident it would have been contention for the win. Anna, RAI should have been there with you so all of Europe could enjoy this.

Of course, this was a big hit in Italy, and her career continued well into the new millennium. She also did some TV presenting work and was poised to conquer the Italian version of Strictly Come Dancing/Dancing with the Stars until a leg injury forced her out.

Here she is at the beginning of her Sanremo journey with her second placed song Un'emozione da poco from 1979.

[eurovision-revisited]

1999 Jerusalem - Number 10 - Vanessa Chinitor - "Like The Wind"

Remarkably, staying in Jerusalem. It feels like for the past two years, there have been many more songs outside the actual contest than inside.

Like the Wind is a waltz about the erosive forces of nature. It's a geography lesson. By the time the key change hits, the metaphor is apparent. Vanessa is telling us to be like the wind. Eternal, unstoppable. Be the force of nature you truly are. It's almost as unsubtle as Germany's entry.

What sets it apart from that, is the gentle fairground waltziness. The winds here are gentle gusts swirling around your feet and whipping up the leaves at best. No hurricanes or tropical storms. Perhaps an autumnal gust at most. Be an unstoppable force of nature, but be gentle and kind of cute. You may grind down mountains, but make sure you do so in an endearing and elegant manner.

Vanessa won the Belgian national final Eurosong '99 easily. She got maximum points from the juries (two of them), from the public televote and was in equal first with the results of the two Radio polls that were also run. There were some more modern dance tracks in the final, so clearly the whole of Belgium still want traditional and safe music. The country wasn't ready to experiment as a whole yet.

In Jerusalem, Vanessa drew the death slot and went on second. Nevertheless, she still managed to get 38 points which this year were good enough for 12th place. The point distribution was skewed with lots of songs clustered at the bottom with fewer than 40 points. Belgium turned out to be the best of this group.

Vanessa had one more go at qualifying for Eurovision in 2006. Unfortunately this ended in a last place finish in the preliminary heats.

However, Like the Wind managed to do exceptionally well in the Flemish Ultratop top 50 and she continued to release Dutch language music for the next six years. By 2006 her music career was slowing down. She had one more album out in 2010.

[eurovision-revisited]

Jerusalem 1999: Televoting

Like 1998, 1999 was 100% Televote. Except like 1998, it wasn't really. There were four countries (Lithuania, Türkiye, Ireland, and Bosnia and Herzegovina) that used juries. Having those jury votes once again lets me look at which countries and songs were jury favourites and which weren't, examine the effect of the running order, and a few other little things.

First, there were some notable jury favourites. Poland and Ireland got more than 70% of their entire vote from the juries. In the case of Ireland that was from just three juries, as they couldn't vote for themselves. Slovenia also got more than 50% of their entire vote from the four juries. What do all these songs have in common? Why, they're all big vocal ballads of course!

Looking at it from the other side (ignoring those countries that only got a few points entire from the televote), the big televote winners were Israel with an upbeat, birthday related song. Also doing well with the televote were Bosnia & Herzegovina (ethnic instrumentation and a little non-standard), Norway (hmmm) and Denmark (contemporary ballad) all of whom got fewer than 10% of their vote totals from the juries.

There was again a marked effect of running order on the televote. I split the contest into a first half and second half, excluding Poland as there are an odd number of entries, and they're in the middle. The jury vote is split 45% first half to 49% second half while the televote is split 33% first half to 67% second half. The running order effect is not quite as marked as in 1998, but it is still present.

Another stat that highlights the running order effect is the number of top ten finishes in each half. Three of the top ten are from the first half while the other seven are in the second half.

One noticeable effect on the scoring came not from the televote, but from the running order putting the two big songs almost next to each other, with only Cyprus separating them. Poor Cyprus got annihilated in the vote. Poland and Portugal either side of this power sandwich didn't fare much better.

[eurovision-revisited]

1999 Jerusalem - Number 1 - Cheryl Beattie - "Fly"

Yes, I did it. Two UK radio-only non-qualifiers as my top two songs for 1999. 1999 was not the best year at Eurovision and hopefully by looking at all of the other songs that weren't selected, you can see what it might have been. Televoting truly confused the delegations.

Even more than Susan Black, this is a voice and a talent that isn't known. She had a brief mayfly moment with this track, then disappeared. Cheryl Beattie is an Australian singer who'd spent ten years in New York and London trying to get a break in the music industry. She'd been managed by Whitney Houston's manager in the US and was signed to BMG. In London she found equally high profile supporters. She wrote this song prior to 1997 and had been performing it and recording it, but without a release ever occurring. It was known but somehow never made its way out into the public.

Until 1999. Her management managed to get her into the line-up of The Great British Song Contest - one final fling perhaps to get some recognition. But alas no. It's a huge ballad and ballads were not a 1999s thing. Later the same year a club remix was released and that did well in London's clubs, but not in the charts. The song finally made it but only in an underground fashion. Cheryl left London and returned to Australia, seemingly giving up on music. A sad story.

But what a song. Fly is a very traditional ballad indeed. This could have been released at any point in the thirty years prior to 1999 and no one would have thought it out of place. It's a broken hearted song about allowing someone to take off and probably never making it. It's almost heart-breaking that she wrote it, is singing it and is simultaneously living it. She didn't manage to take off herself.

Let's not miss out on what so hugely special about this. Her voice. She's out Celine-ing Celine. Quietly building to huge notes, huge key changes, and huge choruses. As much as I normally prefer unconventionality and quirk, sometimes you just have to sit back and go wow, what a performance. This is one of those occasions. Given the song's meaning and the context of how it came to be, the sadness inherent in it is only magnified.

Sorry, sobbing a little bit here.

[eurovision-revisited]

1999 Jerusalem - Number 7 - Doris Dragović - "Marija Magdalena"

Another controversial one, and perhaps for more than one reason.

There is no denying that when it comes to qualifying for Eurovision Doris Dragović is spectacularly good. In 1986 she entered Jugovizija and went on to represent Yugoslavia in Norway. After that she had a very successful solo career in the former Yugoslavia, but was feted the most in her native Croatia and specifically Split, her home city.

In 1999 she gave it another shot, and entered Dora. She waltzed away with the crown, scoring ten maximums for the regional juries and winning the televote. Two attempts, two victories. Doris headed to Jerusalem with strong backing and a strong song.

Marija Magdelena is another religious song in a Eurovision year full of religious themes and allusions. This one is slightly more overt given the subject matter, although ultimately this a song about the devotion of a woman to a man using its theme to present a more earthly hankering. The verse builds with drama and strings until the chorus fulfils the longing that's been building with a simple, rich chanted name.

All of this worked. It came fourth in the results despite performing fourth in the running order. We saw last year how much of a disadvantage that could be with a full televote.

However was it legal? This was the year that backing tracks became compulsory and the orchestra vanished. But there were rules about what could be on those backing tracks, specifically all vocals had to be live and a Marija Magdelena had male voices supporting that dramatic chorus. There weren't any men on stage. Technical foul! Norway challenged and Croatia were docked 33% of their points, but only for the purposes of the calculating their future qualification score on the EBU's runic numerology tables.

Doris didn't care - she continued a successful music career, only briefly scoring perhaps more opprobrium by singing her most successful song to the new Montenegrin Prime Minister on their independence day in 2000. The football fans of Split were not happy and issued death threats.

[eurovision-revisited]

1999 Jerusalem - Number 11 - Sürpriz - "Reise Nach Jerusalem - Kudüs'e Seyahat"

Back to the videos and all the way back to Jerusalem for another Ralph Siegel entry. Germany's ever-present schlager-matic songwriter who's written about everything from penguins to Genghis Khan has written another song about peace, given it to a Turkish band and sent it to Jerusalem.

Except it didn't even win in the German national final Countdown Grand Prix. It came second by a large margin to Corinna May, the blind singer who went on to represent Germany at Eurovision in 2002. Her song Hör den Kindern einfach zu (Just Listen to the Children) was disqualified shortly after the final when it was discovered that the song had been released in 1997 by someone else. How these things slip through I don't know.

Luckily there was this in second place and Sürpriz went to Jerusalem with a song about going to Jerusalem. In a very Siegel way the song reference childhood, in this case a game of musical chairs, in which there's always someone left at the end when the music stops with nowhere left to sit. Instead of squabbles, the song says that peace is more important the childish games. The message is barely disguised; it's a subtle as a brick.

It's also a song sent by Germany with Turkish members. The last time Eurovision was in Israel, Turkey boycotted it. There are so many sensitivities here that you might imagine they would be tiptoed around, but no Siegel just goes 'peace everyone' and it was so popular it finished third at Eurovision.

Having said that - it is catchy. The Turkish instrumentation adds to what is essential a hook repeated many times until it insistently burrows its way into your brain via your eardrums. That can't have harmed it. That earworm is so stuck in my brain that it's wriggled its way up to 11th for my songs for 1999. Not too shabby.

Unsurprizingly Sürpriz were one-hit wonders. The band had probably been brought together for Eurovision this year by Siegel and his enablers.

[eurovision-revisited]

1999 Jerusalem - Number 16 - Darja Švajger - "For A Thousand Years"

Darja Švajger returns to the Eurovision stage in Jerusalem only four years after representing Slovenia in Dublin. In between those appearance she's been a regular at EMA. She even finished second in the Slovenian national selection competition in 1993, the first year they entered Eurovision as an independent nation. Darja is ready to sing for Slovenia every single year.

For a Thousand Years is a grand ballad that is close to falling into the Eurovision sub-genre that gets called 'Bond themes'. It would have benefited from a live orchestra, but Darja does just fine with only a backing track, letting those big vocals build. There's nothing showy here, no dancers or props, just Darja centre-stage in a marvellous yellow ball gown.

It managed to finish 11th and that's from 6th in the running order - not too shabby. In previous years in the 1990s, this would not have stood out so much, but now countries are going for more high-tempo, dance adjacent chart sounds, a huge ballad is something more unusual. A throw-back to years past, but not an unwelcome one.

This was to Darja's last go at a Eurovision and EMA as a singer. She's been back as a judge on several occasions as well as an EMA host. On a couple of occasions she's led Slovenia's Eurovision delegation too. Then there are the many albums she's release, winning a couple of other Slovenian musical festivals, she won the Golden Rooster in 1996. For some time she's been the lynchpin of Slovenia's representation in Eurovision

[eurovision-revisited]

Jerusalem 1999

Oooooh, dusky! We've come to Jerusalem as the sun sets, Shabbat ends, and the festivities can begin!

Welcome to the International Conference Centre in Jerusalem, last host of the Eurovision Song Contest in 1979. First impressions are that it's still bright and vaguely purple - like Birmingham. There's a Toshiba sponsored scoreboard mounted on a poop deck, high above the main stage to the right - like Birmingham. There's a cheering crowd with flags and signs situated to the front of the audience - like Birmingham.

But what's this? Where's the orchestra? It's gone. No more conductors in humorous costumes doing their bow! All competitors must now supply a backing track and won't have live orchestral backing. Looking down the list of entrants, and another shock. Most of them are singing in English. Half the songs are in English with another two partly in English - the EBU have lifted the language rule again. Countries can sing in any language they like, and that language would appear to be English.

This year's voting, like last year's, is 100% televote where available. This time there are four countries unable to provide the technology, but everyone else is going to the phones and the public. There's also an intermission. Our hosts entertain us with a little song on stage while those countries that have broadcasters that wish to, can run ads in the middle of the contest. It's difficult to call this an innovation, but the push for broadcasters to reap some reward for devoting channel time and the resources to select and send an act every year, is increasing.

So many changes! One thing the EBU are sticking to however is their statistically complex relegation system. This year's victims are Finland, Greece, Switzerland, Hungary, North Macedonia, Romania and Slovakia. That list is getting long... Returning are Austria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Denmark and Iceland with Lithuania are back for the first time since their debut in 1994.

After bravely plumping for the televoting revolution, the EBU are pressing the accelerator hard to the floor in 1999 and introducing a whole boatload of new changes to aim solidly for relevance in a music industry that had been moving on without Eurovision for years. Bye-bye ballads!

Another little change is that for the first time there are three presenters. Dafna Dekel (who sang Israel's 1992 entry), Sigal Shachmon (presenter, dancer and model) and a little out of place, Yigal Ravid (radio and television presenter, and current affairs report)