Eurovision Song Contest 2005

The Eurovision Song Contest 2005 was the 50th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Kyiv, Ukraine, following the country's victory at the with the song " Wild Dances" by Ruslana. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster National Television Company of Ukraine (NTU), the contest was held at the Palace of Sports, and consisted of a semi-final on 19 May, and a final on 21 May 2005. The two live shows were presented by Ukrainian television presenters Maria Efrosinina and Pavlo Shylko.

Thirty-nine countries participated in the contest, three more than the previous record of thirty-six, that took part the year before. and made their first participation this year, while returned to the contest after a six-year absence, having last taken part .

The winner was with the song " My Number One", performed by Helena Paparizou and written by Manos Psaltakis, Christos Dantis and Natalia Germanou. This was Greece's first victory in the contest after 31 years of participation. , , , and rounded out the top five. Malta equalled their best result from , while Romania achieved their best result in their Eurovision history. Unusually, all " Big Four" countries (France, Germany, Spain and United Kingdom) ended up as the "Last Four", all placing in the bottom four positions in the final.

Location

Kyiv is the capital and largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper. The Palace of Sports, a multi-purpose indoor arena, was confirmed by officials as the host venue on 6 September 2004. However, in order to host the contest, the facilities had been brought up to the standard required by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

At the end of December 2004, work began on the renovation
of the hall, for which approximately 4 million francs were allocated. Renovation works were to be finished by 20 April, however, they were completed at the beginning of May. The arena could accommodate over 5,000 seated spectators. Additionally 2,000 press delegates were catered for.

Hotel rooms were scarce as the contest organisers asked the Ukrainian government to put a block on bookings they did not control themselves through official delegation allocations or tour packages: this led to many people's hotel bookings being cancelled.

Organizers hoped that by hosting Eurovision, it would boost Ukraine's image abroad and increase tourism, while the country's new government hoped that it would also give a modest boost to the long-term goal of acquiring European Union membership.

Participants

Thirty-nine countries participated in the 2005 contest. returned to the contest after a six-year absence, last competing . and competed in the contest for the first time.

Several of the performing artists had previously represented the same country in past editions: Constantinos Christoforou had represented as a solo artist and as part of One; Helena Paparizou had represented as part of Antique; Selma had represented ; and Chiara had represented . In addition, Alexandros Panayi providing backing vocals for Greece, had represented ; Anabel Conde providing backing vocals for Andorra, had represented ; and Elina Konstantopoulou providing backing vocals for Cyprus, had represented .

Other countries

Active EBU members

broadcaster Czech Television initially applied to participate in the 2005 contest; however, it reconsidered débuting in the contest and later withdrew its application. broadcaster Télé Liban initially confirmed its début in the contest and selected the song "" performed by Aline Lahoud as its entry; however, the broadcaster announced its withdrawal from the competition in March 2005 after finding out the obligation to broadcast all participating entries, including the Israeli one, as well as enabling its viewers to vote for them; this contravened a Lebanese law prohibiting any acknowledgement of Israel.

Format

Visual design

The official logo of the contest remained the same from the with the country's flag in the heart being changed. Following Istanbul's 'Under the Same Sky', the slogan for the 2005 show was 'Awakening', which symbolised the awakening of the country and city ready to present itself to Europe. The postcards (short clips shown between performances) for the 2005 show illustrated Ukraine's culture and heritage along with a more modern and industrial side to the country.

This was the first edition to be broadcast in widescreen 16:9 format.

Presenters

The hosts of the Eurovision Song Contest in Kyiv were television presenter Maria "Masha" Efrosinina and DJ Pavlo "Pasha" Shylko. Previous winner Ruslana returned to the stage in Kyiv to perform in the interval act and to interview the contestants backstage in the 'green room'. Ruslana was also intended to be a presenter for the show, but was pulled out before the contest for numerous reasons, including her poor English skills. The Ukrainian boxers Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko opened the televoting, while a special trophy was presented to the winner by Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko.

Publicity

An official CD and DVD was released and a new introduction was an official pin set, which contains heart-shaped pins with the flags of all thirty-nine participating countries. The EBU also commissioned a book "The Eurovision Song Contest – The Official History" by British/American author John Kennedy O'Connor to celebrate the contest's fiftieth anniversary. The book was presented on screen during the break between songs 12 and 13 (Serbia and Montenegro, Denmark). The book was published in English, German, French, Dutch, Swedish, Danish and Finnish.

Contest overview

Semi-final

The semi-final was held on 19 May 2005 at 21:00 ( CET). 25 countries performed but all 39 participants voted.

Final

The finalists were:
*the four automatic qualifiers , , , and the ;
*the top 10 countries from the 2004 final (other than the automatic qualifiers);
*the top 10 countries from the 2005 semi-final.

The final was held on 21 May 2005 at 21:00 ( CET) and was won by .

Spokespersons

Each participating broadcaster appointed a spokesperson who was responsible for announcing, in English or French, the votes for its respective country. The order in which each country announced their votes was compiled by placing the countries that failed to qualify from the semi-final first in the running order they performed during the semi-final, followed by the finalists which voted in the order they performed in during the final. The spokespersons are shown alongside each country.

#
#
#
# Anne Allegrini
# Elena Ponomareva
# Nancy Coolen
# Ragnhildur Steinunn Jónsdóttir
#
# Maarja-Liis Ilus
# Jari Sillanpää
# Ruth Gumbau
#
# Dana
# Katarina Čas
#
#
# Cheryl Baker
# Valerie Vella
#
# Ingvild Helljesen
# Meltem Ersan Yazgan
# Elena Camerzan
#
# Melani Steliou
#
#
# Nina Radulović
# Gry Johansen
# Annika Jankell
# Karolina Gočeva
# Maria Orlova
# Thomas Hermanns
# Barbara Kolar
#
# Yana Churikova
# Ana Mirjana Račanović
#
# Marija Naumova
# Marie Myriam

Detailed voting results

The EBU introduced an undisclosed threshold number of televotes that would have to be registered in each voting country in order to make that country's votes valid. If that number was not reached, the country's backup jury would vote instead. This affected Albania, Andorra and Monaco in the semi-final, and Andorra, Moldova and Monaco in the final.

Semi-final

12 points

Below is a summary of all 12 points in the semi-final:

Final

12 points

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

Broadcasts

Other awards

In addition to the main winner's trophy, the Marcel Bezençon Awards and the Barbara Dex Award were contested during the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest.

Marcel Bezençon Awards

The Marcel Bezençon Awards, organised since 2002 by Sweden's then-Head of Delegation and 1992 representative Christer Björkman, and 1984 winner Richard Herrey, honours songs in the contest's final. The awards are divided into three categories: Artistic Award which was voted by previous winners of the contest, Composer Award and Press Award.

Barbara Dex Award

The Barbara Dex Award is a humorous fan award given to the worst dressed artist each year. Named after Barbara Dex who came last for , wearing her self-designed dress, the award was handed by the fansite House of Eurovision from 1997 to 2016 and is being carried out by the fansite songfestival.be since 2017.

Official album

''Eurovision Song Contest: Kyiv 2005'' was the official compilation album of the 2005 contest, put together by the European Broadcasting Union and released by EMI Records and CMC International on 2 May 2005. The album featured all 39 songs that entered in the 2005 contest, including the semi-finalists that failed to qualify into the grand final.

The original cover designed for the album was changed after 's withdrawal from the Eurovision Song Contest 2005 after announcing they would show advertisements over the Israeli entry. Had they entered, they would have been on track 4, disc 2 with the song " Quand tout s'enfuit" by Aline Lahoud.

It was reported that sales of the 2005 Eurovision merchandise reached record-breaking levels.

Charts

Notes

References

Further reading

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External links

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2005
Music festivals in Ukraine
2005 song contests
2005 in Ukraine
Music in Kyiv
2000s in Kyiv
May 2005 in Europe
Events in Kyiv