Eurovision Song Contest 2000


The Eurovision Song Contest 2000 was the 45th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Stockholm, Sweden, following Charlotte Nilsson's win at the 1999 contest in Jerusalem, Israel with the song "Take Me to Your Heaven". The contest was held on 13 May 2000 at the Globe Arena. It was the first time since 1996 that the contest was held on mainland Europe. The contest was the second to be held in Stockholm, and the fourth held in Sweden. The presenters were Kattis Ahlström and Anders Lundin.
The winner of the 2000 contest was the Olsen Brothers who represented Denmark with the song "Fly on the Wings of Love". The song was written by one of the brothers, Jørgen Olsen. On the day of their victory, Jørgen Olsen was 50 years and 61 days of age, making him the oldest artist yet to win the contest. However, he would not hold the record for long, as Dave Benton triumphed in the following year at the age of 50 years and 101 days, breaking the record by 40 days. The combined ages of The Olsen Brothers make them the oldest aged act ever to win the contest. The Globe Arena was, at the time, the largest venue chosen to host the contest with a capacity of 16,000 spectators. The postcards used to introduce each country participating involved Swedish themes that incorporated each nation in some respect. All the postcards are filmed in Stockholm, Sweden, however, the only exception is the postcard for Sweden, which is filmed before Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany. 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", and was later one of the possible choices for the generic logo introduced at the 2004 Contest.
The favourite in this year's contest was Estonia, who was also a fan favourite and praised by the press. However, as the voting results came in, immediately took control of the scoreboard, beating into second place and into 3rd place., and decided not to compete for financial reasons. The countries with the five lowest average scores over the previous five contests who had participated in 1999,,,, and were excluded meaning that five countries could return. These countries were:,,, and. also joined the contest as the only country to debut.
For the first time, an official CD compilation was released; it contained all of the songs of the participating nations and was available throughout Europe. Such a disc was attempted in the previous year, however it lacked four of the competing songs. Sponsored by Microsoft, the contest was also broadcast in Canada, Australia, Japan and United States via the internet for the first time.

Location

SVT announced on 7 July 1999 that the contest would be hosted by the Globe Arena in Stockholm. Other possible candidates had been Scandinavium in Gothenburg and Malmömässan in Malmö. They had previously hosted Eurovision Song Contest 1985 and 1992 respectively. The Globe was said to be chosen because Stockholm had not hosted the contest since 1975 and that it would be somewhat cheaper than the other options.

Format

Design

The graphic design programme for this year's contest was developed by Stockholm Design Lab and was centred around a stylised mouth symbol. It was given the Excellent Swedish Design award later that year. The softness of the mouth was contrasted with a pointy typeface, made specifically for the contest. During each performance, a distorted version of each performing country's flag would be shown within the mouth next to the stage.

Interval act

The intermission during the finale of the ESC was "Once Upon a Time Europe Was Covered With Ice", a movie/song directed, composed and edited by Johan Söderberg and produced by John Nordling. For the film Söderberg had traveled all over Europe to record children performing the score. On stage were violinist Caroline Lundgren, drummer Strängnäs Trumkorps plus street musicians from Stockholm and dancers from the Bounce Streetdance Company.

Incidents

There were some controversies concerning some participating countries. Israel, who opened the contest, entered a group who waved Israeli and Syrian flags advocating peace between the two nations. The two male singers in the group also ran up to each other and kissed for a brief moment. 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 European Broadcasting Union.
In the Netherlands, NOS decided to take the Contest off air halfway through because of the Enschede fireworks disaster that happened earlier that day, so it could use the channel for continuous news broadcasts. 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". As a result, televoting had to be suspended and the Dutch votes were given by a stand-by jury instead. The contest was later rebroadcast in full.

Returning artists

Results

Draw for the running order took place on 21 November 1999.
DrawCountryArtistSongLanguagePlacePoints
01PingPong"Sameach" Hebrew227
02Linda Wagenmakers"No Goodbyes"English1340
03Nicki French"Don't Play That Song Again"English1628
04Ines"Once in a Lifetime"English498
05Sofia Mestari"On aura le ciel"French235
06Taxi"The Moon"English1725
07Claudette Pace"Desire"English873
08Charmed"My Heart Goes Boom"English1157
09Alsou"Solo"English2155
10Nathalie Sorce"Envie de vivre"French242
11Voice"Nomiza" Greek, Italian218
12August & Telma"Tell Me!"English1245
13Serafín Zubiri"Colgado de un sueño"Spanish1818
14Olsen Brothers"Fly on the Wings of Love"English1195
15Stefan Raab"Wadde hadde dudde da?"German, English596
16:de:Jane Bogaert|Jane Bogaert"La vita cos'è?"Italian2014
17Goran Karan"Kad zaspu anđeli"Croatian970
18Roger Pontare"When Spirits Are Calling My Name"English788
19XXL"100% te ljubam" Macedonian, English1529
20Nina Åström"A Little Bit"English1818
21Brainstorm"My Star"English3136
22Pınar Ayhan & The SOS"Yorgunum Anla"Turkish, English1059
23Eamonn Toal"Millennium of Love"English692
24The Rounder Girls"All to You"English1434

Scoreboard

According to the EBU rules of the 45th Eurovision Song Contest 2000, all participating countries should have used televoting, where the top ten most voted for songs were awarded the 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 point. In the televoting household shall not be permitted to vote more than three times. In exceptional circumstances where televoting was not possible, a jury was used instead: Russia, Macedonia, Turkey and Romania.
The Dutch votes were the votes of the backup jury due to interrupted broadcasting of the contest in the Netherlands because of the fireworks disaster in the Dutch city of Enschede.

12 points

Below is a summary of all 12 points in the final:
N.ContestantVoting nation
8,,,,,,,
4,,,
4,,,
3,,
2,
1
1
1

Qualification for the 2001 contest

In addition to the Big Four and the host country of the 2001 contest, Denmark, the 12 countries with the highest average scores between 1996 and 2000 were allowed to take part in the Eurovision Song Contest 2001.
Key:
Automatically qualified
Qualified
! data-sort-type="number"|
! data-sort-type="number"|
! data-sort-type="number"|
! data-sort-type="number"|
! data-sort-type="number"| 2000

International broadcasts and voting

Sponsored by Microsoft, the contest was also broadcast in Canada, Australia, Japan, the United States and all 18 European MSN sites via the internet for the first time.

Voting and spokespersons

The spokespersons announced the score from their respective country's televote in running order.
  1. – Yoav Ginai
  2. – Marlayne
  3. – Colin Berry
  4. – Evelin Samuel
  5. – Marie Myriam
  6. – Andreea Marin
  7. – Valerie Vella
  8. – Marit Åslein
  9. – Zhanna Agalakova
  10. – Thomas Van Hamme
  11. – Loukas Hamatsos
  12. – Ragnheiður Elín Clausen
  13. – Hugo de Campos
  14. – Michael Teschl
  15. – Axel Bulthaupt
  16. – Astrid Von Stockar
  17. – Marko Rašica
  18. – Malin Ekander
  19. – Sandra Todorovska
  20. – Pia Mäkinen
  21. – Lauris Reiniks
  22. – Osman Erkan
  23. – Derek Mooney
  24. – Dodo Roščić

    Commentators

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

Participating countries

Eurovision Song Contest: Stockholm 2000 was the official compilation album of the 2000 Contest, put together by the European Broadcasting Union and released by EMI Records and CMC International on 13 May 2000. The album featured all 24 songs that entered in the 2000 contest, and was the first time that the EBU had produced such merchandise.

Charts