Eurovision Song Contest 1999

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**Eurovision Song Contest 1999**

Date	29 May 1999
Presenter	Yigal Ravid, Dafna Dekel & Sigal Shahamon
Host Broadcaster	IBA
Venue	International Convention Centre (Usshishkin Hall), Jerusalem, Israel
Winning Song	Take Me to Your Heaven (Sweden)
Voting system	Each country awarded 12, 10, 8-1 points to their 10 favourite songs
Number of Songs	23
Countries Making Debut	None
Nul points	None
Interval Act	Dana International

The Eurovision Song Contest 1999 was the 44th Eurovision Song Contest and was held on May 29, 1999 in the Usshishkin Hall at the International Convention Centre in Jerusalem, Israel. The presenters were Yigal Ravid, Dafna Dekel, and Sigal Shahamon. This is the second time that the contest takes place outside of Europe. The contest was won by Charlotte Nilsson who was representing Sweden with the song “Take Me To Your Heaven” (originally: Tusen och en natt). Charlotte brought Sweden’s fourth victory overall, with a second win in the 90s after Carola in 1991.

From this year, the long-standing rule that each country had to sing in one of its own national languages was dropped, and it was decided that France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom, as the highest-paying European Broadcasting Union subscribers, would automatically be allowed to participate every year, irrespective of their five-year point average. Also, the requirement of an orchestra was optional. The Israeli broadcaster chose not to use an orchestra, which meant that for the first time in the history of the contest, all entries would perform using a backing track. This change was criticized by two-time Eurovision winner Johnny Logan, who commented that the contest turned into “karaoke”.

The favourite to win the contest this year was Iceland. Selma performed “All Out of Luck”, which was a bouncy upbeat song with a prophetic title on the 13th place. Cyprus was also considered a challenger for Iceland, but ended up only getting 2 points (from the United Kingdom). When the voting began, it was a race between Iceland, Croatia, Germany, and Sweden, with Iceland holding the lead throughout most of the voting. The votes from Bosnia and Herzegovina ended the suspense, giving Sweden 12 points and nothing to Iceland.

Because the song used synthesized male backing voices, Croatia's score was reduced by 33% to 79 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.

The interval act was last year’s winner, Dana International, who performed her new song “Free”, which caused some controversy in Israel because of the lyrics. The contest ended with all of the participants singing “Hallelujah” – Israel’s winning song in 1979.

1 Results
2 Voting structure
3 Score sheet
4 Map
5 External links

The presenters, Dafna Dekel, Yigal Ravid & Sigal Shahamon.

Charlotte performing Take Me To Your Heaven for Sweden at Eurovision 1999.

[edit] Results

Draw	Country	Language	Artist	Song	Translation	Place	Points
1	Lithuania	Samogitian - Lithuanian dialect	Aistė Smilgevičiūtė	Strazdas	The Song Thrush	20	13
2	Belgium	English	Vanessa Chinitor	Like The Wind	-	12	38
3	Spain	Spanish	Lydia	No quiero escuchar	I Don't Want to Listen	23	1
4	Croatia	Croatian	Doris Dragović	Marija Magdalena	Mary Magdalene	4	118
5	United Kingdom	English	Precious	Say It Again	-	12	38
6	Slovenia	English	Darja Švajger	For a Thousand Years	-	11	50
7	Turkey	Turkish	Tugba Önal & Grup Etnik	Dön artik	Come Back	16	21
8	Norway	English	Stig Van Eijk	Living My Life Without You	-	14	35
9	Denmark	English	Trine Jepsen & Michael Teschl	This Time I Mean It	-	8	71
10	France	French	Nayah	Je veux donner ma voix	I Want To Give My Voice	19	14
11	Netherlands	English	Marlayne	One Good Reason	-	8	71
12	Poland	Polish	Mietek Szczesniak	Przytul mnie mocno	Hold Me Tight	18	17
13	Iceland	English	Selma	All Out of Luck	-	2	146
14	Cyprus	Greek	Marlain	Tha'ne erotas	It Will Be Love	22	2
15	Sweden	English	Charlotte Nilsson	Take Me to Your Heaven	-	1	163
16	Portugal	Portuguese	Rui Bandeira	Como tudo começou	How Everything Began	21	12
17	Ireland	English	The Mullans	When You Need Me	-	17	18
18	Austria	English	Bobbie Singer	Reflection	-	10	65
19	Israel	English, Hebrew	Eden	Yom huledet (Happy Birthday)	Birthday	5	93
20	Malta	English	Times Three	Believe 'n Peace	-	15	32
21	Germany	English, German, Hebrew, Turkish	Sürpriz	Reise nach Jerusalem - Kudüs'e seyahat	Journey to Jerusalem	3	140
22	Bosnia and Herzegovina	Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, French	Dino & Béatrice	Putnici	Travellers	7	86
23	Estonia	English	Evelin Samuel & Camille	Diamond of Night	-	6	90

[edit] Voting structure

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 and Bosnia & Herzegovina who used juries.

After some thoroughly confusing thrills and spills in the early voting, with Lithuania awarding maximum points to the - for once - rank outsiders Ireland, the contest soon settled into a nip-and-tuck duel between Sweden and Iceland, but with Iceland more often than not holding a slight lead. The fortunes of Germany were more erratic - on a few occasions, their challenge seemed to be failing, only for a couple of high scores to haul them back to within striking distance of the leading pair. That appeared to be the case once again when the penultimate voting country, Bosnia and Herzegovina, handed ten points to the Germans. This momentarily distracted attention from the fact that the Balkan nation had not yet awarded any points to Sweden or Iceland, meaning that one of the two was bound to receive nothing. With Charlotte Nilsson of Sweden already having crept into a three-point lead at a crucial moment, the realisation quickly dawned that, while twelve points for Iceland would put them back into a commanding position, twelve points for Sweden would settle the contest in abrupt fashion. In the end it was Selma of Iceland who was 'all out of luck', while Sweden were taken to their heaven of being able to host the millennium edition of the Eurovision Song Contest.