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 Lyricist(s) of the year/English lyrics award.

The 2009 esctoday.com Award for Lyricist of the year/English lyrics goes to…

• …Óskar Páll Sveinsson, Tinatin Japaridze and Chris Neil of Iceland
  
  

Óskar Páll Sveinsson, Tinatin Japaridze and Chris Neil wrote the lyrics to the Icelandic entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009. Performed by Yohanna, Is it true won the first semi final and finished second in the final.

• You can find the list of all award results revealed so far this year here.

The winners

This is the third esctoday.com award for Iceland this year and the fifth one overall following victories in the categories Best duo/group performance and Best duo/group vocal performance in 2008 as well as Best backing performers and Best female vocal performance in 2009. It is still the first award in the lyricist category. It is the first time that this award is given out as in 2007 and 2008, there was only one award for Lyricist of the year. The two awards went to Saša Miloševic Mare (Serbia) in 2007 and Maria Haukaas Storeng (Norway) in 2008.

Óskar Páll Sveinsson and Chris Neil are mainly producers and composers, but have co-written the lyrics to the Icelandic entry Is it true?. Tinatin Japaridze is a newcomer to the music scene. She co-wrote the English lyrics of the Icelandic entry but she also wrote the lyrics of the Russian version of the song on her own.

Is it true? is a break-up song. Two partners seem to deny that their relationship is no longer working out until one dares to ask if it is really over, which has become more of a rhethorical question:

So tell me about the rumours
Are they only rumours?
Are they only lies?
Falling out of a perfect dream
Coming out of the blue

Is it true?
Is it over?
Did I throw it away?
Was it you?
Did you tell me you would
Never leave me this way?

The complete results

The Icelandic team easily won this award ahead of Switzerland's Adrian Sieber. The UK team of Diane Warren and Andrew Lloyd Webber follows to far in third place.

1. Óskar Páll Sveinsson, Tinatin Japaridze and Chris Neil (Iceland) – 28.3%
2. Adrian Sieber* (Switzerland) – 20.5%
3. Diane Warren and Andrew Lloyd Webber (United Kingdom) – 18.6%
4. Nikolas Metaxas (Cyprus) – 17.6%
5. Alexander Rybak (Norway) – 15.0%

*Adrian Sieber was actually falsly nominated along with the other members of his band, but in fact he wrote the lyrics on his own.

Karaoke version of the winning song with lyrics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T7Q4fYLCgw

The next award to be revealed today will be Lyricst of the year/Non-English and multilingual lyrics.