Australia as a country cannot compete in Eurovision. That is true, at least it has been up until now. However today on the Australia4ESC blog I am going to let you in on a little secret. Australians have been secretly competing in Eurovision for years without anyone in Europe having any idea! Not only have we competed in Eurovision, we've won!
Starting with Olivia Newton-John (emigrated to Melbourne,Victoria at age 6) competing for the United Kingdom in 1974, we have been subtly appearing as other countries entries once or twice a decade for the last 40 years. John Farrar (born in Melbourne,Victoria) led The Shadows as the UK's entry in 1975, after early being a backing singer when Cliff Richard entered in 1973.
More recently we have had Gina G (from Brisbane, Queensland) represent the UK in 1996, and Jane Comeford (born in Newcastle, New South Wales) as part of Texas Lightning representing Germany in 2006. We also had Bobby Andonov (born in Melbourne,Victoria) represent Macedonia in Junior Eurovision in 2008 (see perfomance here). In 2009 we had Australians Craig Porteils and Cameron Giles-Webb write the Greece's entry This Is Our Night sung by the wonderful Sakis Rouvas.
Australia's greatest Eurovision triumph is the man they call Mr Eurovision Johnny Logan. He represented Ireland as an artist in 1980, as a composer 1984, as both artist and composer in 1987, and as a composer in 1992. Johnny has the amazing record of 3 Eurovision wins and one second place from 4 attempts! Not to bad for a boy born in Frankston,Victoria!!
We, the Indonesians that live above you, have secretly participated too.
ReplyDeleteThere was Anneke Grönloh in 1964. Then there were the Maessen sisters from 1970. They represented Belgium in 1977 and one of them represented Belgium again in 1982.
There was, of course, Sandra Reemer (1972, 1976, 1979) and Dries Holten, which she dueted with in 1972.
There are some others, and they each represented the Netherlands (unless otherwise noted). They were of Indonesian descent, but the first pureblood Indonesian represented France this year. We supported Anggun!