ALMOST REACHING THE TOP AT EUROVISION (1998)

Morten Thomassen todays writes about the year 1998, with quite a tough battle for the top 3. ESC Covers google translated it from Norwegian to English.

I have said before that as the host country, coming in second place must be top notch, a great position and you avoid the expense of organizing next year’s final.

We will talk about the contribution that managed this with the smallest margin up to the victory and we will go to the gentleman’s year 1998.

From the front row in the hall I saw the British Imaani sing the song “Where Are You?” and she was just 6 points short of taking home the win.

From the front row, I also witnessed a trill of a vote that was not decided until the last country apart from Macedonia gave votes to winner Israel and runner-up Great Britain.

Malta, which led before the last voting, did not get any points and was then 7 points short of winning, this affected poor Chiara so hard that she sat crying in the hotel room for hours afterwards.

As you can see, the difference between second and third place was only 1 point.

Immani, on the other hand, hardly cried that night, her last name is Saleem, but her birth name is actually Melonie Crosdale.

Like so many other artists who have represented the British Isles, her musical career hasn’t really taken off much.

Although she had a fairly good success with her ESC song, she was dropped by her record company already when the next single was to be released.

A few years later, she had a hit as a singer in the group Tru Faith & Dub Conspiracy.

And when I read that she didn’t release her debut album until 2014, you can tell that things take time and it was probably a record deal she was singing about in her song back in 1998.

However, her song from 1998 has a 25th anniversary in 2023 so perhaps a small appearance as half-time feature in a semi-final in Liverpool next year would have been in order?

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