Song of the decade: The results!

Over the last weeks, the readers of esctoday.com have chosen the best song of this Eurovision Song Contest decade. 24 sogns have taken part in the grand final and the poll has closed seconds ago. Now it is time to reveal the results!

To keep the tension, the whole results will not be announced at a time. Instead, we will add 5 songs in ascending order to the list every tenth minute, before the top five will be announced one-by-one.

The results:

The winning song

Is it true? was the Icelandic entry in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest performed by Jóhanna Guðrún Jónsdóttir, who competed under her stage name Yohanna. The song was written by Óskar Páll Sveinsson, Chris Neil and Tinatin Japaridze. It won the first semi final and finished second in the grand final.

Jóhanna was born in Denmark, but her family moved to Reykjavik when she was two years old. Having successfully taken part in a singing competition, she entered a music school for children. Her talent was spotted early and she released her first album when she was only ten years old. The record turned out to be a success and a second album followed in 2001. Her last album for a few years, which included a collection of Christmas songs, was released in 2003 and she then took a break from the music business. After years of training, in 2008 the singer launched her fourth album Butterflies and Elvis, which was a collaboration with British songwriter Lee Horrocks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L69Cg9Co7Q

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

How the voting took place

The wining song was chosen in a "BigPoll" style voting. The voters were able to arrange the songs from 1-24 and based on those results and where they were voting from, 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 points were given per country. Votes to the own country were not counted. Eventually, a four-digit number of people have voted in the poll.

How the finalists were chosen

1. In the first round, the best song of each country was chosen. San Marino and Slovakia both only had one song taking part in this decade so those two were directly qualified for the second round. Having been submitted by the Serbian broadcaster, the 2004 entry from Serbia & Montenegro was added to the list of Serbia while the 2005 entry was added to the list of Montenegro.
2. The 46 songs that reach the second round were allocated in two semi finals. A poll was held, where every reader can choose his or her favourite song. The top eleven of each semi final went forward to the grand final. A twelfth song for each semi final was chosen by an esctoday.com jury. The jury consisted of 15 members and each member could rate all songs with 1-5 points.

The complete results of the semi finals

1st semi final

1. Serbia – 10.4%
   
2. Portugal – 10.1%
3. Norway – 9.0%
4. France – 8.6%
   
5. Malta – 6.4%
6. United Kingdom – 6.4%
   
7. Romania – 5.8%
8. Germany – 5.3%
   
9. Bosnia & Herzegovina – 5.1%
10. Hungary – 4.5%
11. Latvia – 4.5%
12. Cyprus – 4.4%
13. Switzerland – 3.7% jury wildcard *
14. Georgia – 3.7%
15. Bulgaria – 3.1%
16. Moldova – 1.7%
17. Netherlands – 1.7%
18. Lithuania – 1.6%
19. Montenegro – 1.6%
20. Croatia – 1.2%
21. Albania – 0.8%
22. Czech Republic – 0.3%
23. Slovakia – 0.2%

2nd semi final

1. Israel – 11.9%
2. Greece – 10.9%
   
3. Iceland – 9.6%
4. Turkey – 9.2%
   
5. Estonia – 7.3%
6. Ukraine – 5.8%
7. Sweden – 5.4%
8. Belgium – 5.0%
9. Finland – 4.3%
   
10. Slovenia – 4.2%
11. Spain – 4.0%
12. Armenia – 3.7%
13. Denmark -2.8%
14. Poland – 2.7%
15. Russia – 2.4%
16. Andorra – 1.9%
17. San Marino – 1.6%
18. Ireland – 1.5%
19. Monaco – 1.5%
20. FYR Macedonia – 1.4%
21. Belarus – 1.2%
22. Austria – 0.9%
23. Azerbaijan – 0.4% jury wildcard *

*The jury consisted of 15 people rating all songs with 1-5 points. No jury member knew the current standings while voting.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: THE VOTING GOES ON!

Now that the voting for the Song of the Decade is over, we can already announce that the next competition is ahead – the annual esctoday.com awards! From this year on, the awards will be split into two parts – the national final awards and the awards for the songs in the grand final. The nominations for the national final awards will start later tonight, so stay tuned!