I started a new series to remember the fact that Eurovision is 70 years old. 28 of those years I had attended Eurovision at the host city, but unfortunately just 25 years I had press accreditation so I could meet the participating artists and therefor I will focus just on artists from those 25 years.1996 was my second year with accreditation and Eurovision took place in Oslo, Norway, which at that time was my favourite city in Europe. Many countries wanted to take part in Eurovision and so they had a jury picking countries and some fell out, among them Germany and Denmark. The saddest to me was Hungary falling out as I love their song.  23 artists participated that year in Oslo.  I attended all press conferences and technically I saw all of them but a few I did not want to meet individually as I did not like their songs at all.

OSLO was very special as the venue as so central and a bridge linked it with the hotel across the street where 90% of the artists and delegations stayed and you could walk into the hotel lobby and always find an artist or two sitting there, drinking coffee or eating something.

8 of the 23 artists were very special and I enjoyed meeting them individually.  These are the 8 artists from 1996 I will write about.

3rd in line is CONSTANTINOS who represented CYPRUS at the Eurovision song contest with MONO GIA MAS. The song was sung in Greek. I was very impressed with a young Constantinos and we chatted for some time. Like with JASMINE , I also wrote Afrikaans lyrics for the song but failed to find a local singer to record it.  At that stage I had just started actively with covers and had not known many local singers to pitch songs to. Just like with the promo CD singles of Belgium and Finland, this also contained the song in many languages – 5 in total : Greek, English, Spanish, French and Italian. This to me is the ideal item I want from a Eurovision artist. 1996 was a great year in this regard.

Featured image – Youtube