The votes for the fourth annual esctoday.com awards have been cast over the last three and a half weeks and now it is time to reveal the results. We continue with the Best act not to qualify from the semi finals award.

The 2009 esctoday.com Award for Best act not to qualify from the semi finals goes to…

• …Lovebugs of Switzerland with the song The highest heights

Lovebugs represented Switzerland in the Eurovision Song Contest this year and and finished 14th in the first semi final with the song The highest heights.

The winners

Switzerland wins the award in this category for the second year in a row following Paolo Meneguzzi's victory last year with Era stupendo. It is therefore also the second esctoday.com award for Switzerland overall. The other previous winner of this award, which has been held since 2007, was Evridiki of Cyprus in 2007.

Lovebugs originate from Basel and the band was founded in the early nineties, when the members found each other through an ad in a record store. After a change in the line-up, their first album Fluff was released in 1994 to minor success. In 1995, they went on tour through Switzerland and other European countries and also recorded their second album, which did not reach the album charts. The year after, their third album was the first one to reach the charts, where it peaked at number 44. However, their major breakthrough came not before 2000, when their fourth album Transatlantic flight reached number two. It was followed by Awaydays, their first of three number one albums, the year after.

While the albums by Lovebugs were major successes from 2000 onwards, the band had only minor success on the single charts. However, this changed in 2006 when the band released the song Avalon with Norwegian singer Lene Marlin. It was their first top ten hit and it also peaked at number 13 in Norway. Shortly after, they took a break and lead singer Adrian Sieber released his first solo album, which reached the top ten in Switzerland.

The band returned to the spotlight with the announcement that they would represent Switzerland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009. The song that was chosen was the title track of the new album The highest heights, which had been released in the mean time. The album peaked at number two in the charts. Currently, the band consists of Adrian Sieber (vocals), Thomas Rechberger (guitar), Florian Senn (bass guitar), Stefan Wagner (keyborads) and Simon Ramseier (drums). Recently, the band's first 'greatest hits' album has been released.

The complete results

Lovebugs won this category with one third of the votes exactly followed by Andrea of Montenegro.

1. Lovebugs (Switzerland) – 33.3%
2. Andrea (Montegro) – 23.5%
3. Sinéad Mulvey & Black Daisy (Ireland) – 17.1%
4. Susanne Georgi (Andorra) – 13.7%
5. Christina Metaxa (Cyprus) – 12.4%

The winning performance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pjy27olQJOs

The next award winners to be introduced today will be those in the category Best backing performers.