The first esctoday TOP TEN list continues with the number. The first topic are the Top Ten Eurovision hits from Germany in dedication to German's victory in the Eurovision Song Contest 2010.

The following criteria were considered when the ranking was made:

1. High sales figures
2. High chart positions
3. Satus of a song as a classic
4. Heavy airplay
5. Importance of a song for an act's career

Both national final entries and Eurovision Song Contest entries could qualify for the list.

You can find the places 10, 9 and 8 here.
You can find the places 7 and 6 here.
You can find the places 5 and 4 here.
You can find the place 3 and 2 here.

So we continue…

Number 1 – Zwei kleine Italiener by Conny Froboess

Zwei kleine Italiener is without a doubt the most successful German Eurovision Song Contest entry, although Satellite seems to be catching up. The song was written by Christian Bruhn and Georg Buschor and it was submitted to the German Schlager Festival in 1962, which also served as German national final for the Eurovision Song Contest that year. Performed by Conny Froboess, the song won the festival narrowly ahead Siw Malmkvist's Die Wege der Liebe. At the Eurovision Song Contest, it could not double the success of the national final as it finished sixth only among 16 contestants. The result still did not stop the song from becoming a hit.

Two days before the Eurovision Song Contest in Luxembourg, the single reached the top of the German charts making it the first German entry to do so. The song would stay on top for five weeks and by December, it would be sold more than 500,000 times. Considering that the figures of 1962 are based on sales in West Germany alone, whose population was about 25% smaller than the population of Germany these days, it is by far the most sold German entry on homeground ever. Even more impressively, the single was a hit in many countries in Europe, where it sold about 1,225,000 copies. Not many chart information of theses days is available, but it is known that the song was a hit in the Netherlands and Norway. In Norway, the song was a number one hit and it stayed in the charts for almost half a year. Of course, there were also countless cover verions of the song and Conny Froboess herself recorded the song in Italian, Dutch and English. The song is also regularly appears on compilations dedicated to 1960s Schlager music.

The song is so famous on its own that it is often not even associated to the Eurovision Song Contest when presented in nostalgic TV shows, books are radio programmes. In fact, there is something else the song is more famous for: It is considered the first song that deals with immigrant workers in Germany. Still, the lyrics have no kind of a political tone to them but they rather present a love story of two Italians who long for their lovers. The topic is not picked up in the English and Italian versions of the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKROuOY7JJs

Tomorrow, we will provide a full overview with the songs that reached the top ten. Furthermore, we will reveal the songs that were the closest to reach the top ten and we will also explain why certain fan favourites did not reach the list. Of course, we will also reveal next week's topic.