Guest Jury Hits

Second Chance Retro started in 2003 with the purpose of looking back at songs from Eurovision National Finals that were not selected to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest.

However, not all currently participating countries and OGAE clubs participated in the Eurovision Song Contest or held a National Final in 1986 or earlier. For this reason, the Guest Jury Hits was introduced in 2004. This allowed entries from countries without National Finals to choose another song that had been released in the same Retro year, but had not been affiliated to Eurovision. Each Retro year therefore has a Eurovision Second Chance Retro winner and a Guest Jury Hits winner.

The first Guest Jury Hits was held in 2003, when hit songs from 1986 competed. So far eleven contests have been held, with Italy winning six, and Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Rest of the World all winning once. Umberto Tozzi has so far been responsible for three of Italy’s wins.

OGAE Rest of the World won Guest Jury Hits in 2014 for the 1975 entry “Only Yesterday” by The Carpenters, and we are now looking to defend our title with a 1974 entry.

2015 so far

On 28 February 2015 OGAE Rest of World members voted for their favourite ten songs from one of three categories (Rock, Pop and Easy Listening). Each of these categories contained approximately 40 songs. Based on the results of this round of voting, a total of 24 songs were short-listed, the top eight from each of the three categories.

Another round of voting then took place and a winning song was selected to represent OGAE Rest of the World in 2015’s Guest Jury Hits 1974 contest.

The winning entry was “Kung Fu Fighting” by Carl Douglas of Jamaica.

The OGAE ROW voting process for the international contest run from 18 July to 31 August, find details here. Details on all competing entries are available on sechuk here.
With massive lead of 46 points ROW has finished as the winner of competition for the second year in a row. Complete results were published on sechuk.com here.

Table A: Guest Jury Hits results beginning 1985
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Table B: OGAE Rest of the World entrants beginning 1982: scores and placings
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* A member from the performing act is from this country