Tha'nai Erotas

Cyprus was represented at the Eurovision Song Contest 1999 with the song "", composed by George Kallis, with lyrics written by Andreas Karanikolas. The song was performed by singer Marlain. The Cypriot participating broadcaster, the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC), selected the entry through a national final titled

The national final saw nine songs compete for the opportunity to represent the nation. The event was held on 9 February 1999 and the winner was decided by a panel of media personalities. Angelidou's song received the most votes and was selected to represent Cyprus in the contest. Angelidou's performance was the 14th performed at the contest on 29 May 1999 and finished in 22nd place after voting had finished. Despite at one point being first in betting odds to win the contest, the entry received only two points in total, all from the United Kingdom.

Background

Prior to the , the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) had participated in the Eurovision Song Contest representing Cyprus 17 times since its first entry in 1981. It participated yearly, only missing the when its selected song "", performed by Yiannis Dimitrou, was disqualified for being previously released. By the 1999 contest, its best placing was fifth, achieved twice: the first occurrence being with the song "" performed by Anna Vissi and the second with "" performed by Hara and Andreas Constantinou. Its least successful result was when the country came last with the song "" by Elpida, receiving four points in total. Similar to previous years, CyBC opted to host a national final format to select the Cypriot entry.

Before Eurovision

National final

Competing entries

The Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) opened a submission period for songs until 18 December 1998. By the end of the submission period, 66 entries had been submitted. On 17 January 1999, in a radio room the CyBC studios, a 14-member jury listened to the received submissions and chose ten songs to compete in the national final. The selection was done in two stages. The songs were first listened to and the jury then voted and selected 30 entries. From those 30 entries, the ten competing entries for the national final were selected. Prior to the final, "24 chronia" was withdrawn by its composer, Aristos Moschovakis, with production problems cited as the reason.

Final

The final was broadcast live at 21:00 (EET) on RIK 1 on 9 February 1999 in a show titled . The contest was held at the Monte Caputo Nightclub in Limassol, and was hosted by CyBC journalist and presenter Loukas Hamatsos. The winner was chosen by a panel of media personalities, one of whom was Thanos Kalliris, who had represented as part of the group Bang.

The winning song was "", composed by George Kallis, with lyrics by Andreas Karanicolas, and performed by Marlain Angelidou. Angelidou had previously attempted to represent as part of a duo and came second behind Michalis Hatzigiannis in the 1998 Final. In addition to the performances of the competing entries, singers Hatzigiannis, Konstantina, and Spyros Spyrakos also performed during the show.

Promotion

To promote the entry, an event was held at Zoo nightclub in Cyprus where Angelidou and her team were greeted by media while the music video of "" played in the background. The song was commercially released by record label Malvina Music.

At Eurovision

The Eurovision Song Contest 1999 took place at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem on 29 May 1999. According to Eurovision rules, the 23-country participant list for the contest was composed of the winning country from the previous year's contest, the 17 countries, other than the previous year's winner, which had obtained the highest average number of points over the last five contests, and any countries which had not participated in the previous year's content. Cyprus was one of the 17 countries with the highest average scores, and thus were permitted to participate. The running order for the contest was decided by a draw held on 17 November 1998; Cyprus was assigned position 14, following and preceding .

Prior to the contest, the nation had reached first place in betting odds in April, which prompted a Cypriot delegation representative to respond at a CyBC press conference, saying they would prefer to not win due to the costs of hosting the next year and would instead prefer to place a "respectable second". By late May, however, the British company Ladbrokes had shown Cyprus falling to a predicted sixth place. Despite the odds, the entry only received two points, both from the United Kingdom, placing 22nd out of 23, beating only Spain. Andrew Adamides from ''Cyprus Mail'' wrote in a summary of the contest that Cyprus' poor placing was thought to be attributed to this being the first contest where an entry could be performed in any language (Cyprus' entry was performed in Greek, while the winning song was performed in English) and possibly due to political voting. For her performance, Angelidou was joined by backing vocalists Nicole Jones and Lina Kawar.

Voting

The same voting system in use since 1975 was again implemented for this event, with each country providing 1–8, 10 and 12 points to the ten highest-ranking songs as determined by a selected jury or the viewing public through televoting, with countries not allowed to vote for themselves. This was the second contest to feature widespread public voting, and Cyprus opted to implement this method to determine which countries would receive their points, with an 8-member back-up jury assembled in case technical failures rendered the telephone votes invalid. Around 15,000 calls were registered in Cyprus in total during the five-minute voting window, which determined the points awarded by Cyprus to the other participating nations.

References

{{Eurovision Song Contest 1999

1999
Countries in the Eurovision Song Contest 1999
Eurovision