The fourth esctoday.com TOP TEN list ccontinues today with the places 5 and 4 being announced. As announced on Saturday, this week's topic are the TOP TEN most impressive debuts.

The ranking will in fact be based on a mathematical formula that consideres the following criteria:

1. A country's placing
2. The number of countries taking part in a certain year
3. The number of countries having their debut in a certain year
4. The participation of a country under a different name/flag in previous years

Here is a fictive example to show how the raking will work:

Let's say in 1953, ten countries competed in the contest: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I and J. The countries A, B and C take part for the first time, the other countries have already taken part in previous editions. If country A is the highest placed debuting country finishing second, how impressive is that debut?

Although a second place is always impressive, it is not as impressive for a debuting country as it seems in the first place for the following reasons:

• Only ten countries took part. Therefore every country has a mathematical chance of strong 20% to reach the top two.
• Three debuting countries took part. Therefore, the mathimatical chances of at least one of them reaching the top two stands at about 53%!

For this reason, the seven countries that competed in the first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956 are excluded from the top ten. The mathematical chances of a debuting country winning was 100% – Lys Assia's picture in the logo is therefore purely symbolical.

The full formula will be revealed on Saturday.

No. 3 – Moldova (2005)

In 2005, the second year when a semi final was held as part of the main contest, three countries were supposed to have their debut: Moldova, Lebanon and Bulgaria. However, Lebanon withdrew after a song had already been chosen and therefore two debuting countries remained. Moldova chose popular band Zdob si zdub in a national final. The song Bunica bate doba was written by band members Mihai Gincu and Roman Iagupov and its title means "Grandma beats the drum", which was also illustrated on stage in Kyiv. The group was very successful at the Eurovision Song Contest finishing second in the semi final and sixth in the final. Zdob di zdub are still one of Moldova's most popular live acts and they have performed at many festivals around Europe. Last year, they celebrated their 15th anniversary. In 2007, they tried to represent Moldova in the Eurovision Song Contest again but only finished second in the internal selection behind Natalia Barbu. Later, it also turned out that their song Space Cowboy would not have been eligible to compete in Helsinki as its Romanian version had already been performed in public before 1st October 2006.

The sixth place in 2005 remains Moldova's best result in the Eurovision Song Contest to date. The only other entry that made the top ten was Fight in 2007. 2008 was the only year that the country did not make it past the semi final stage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyrR6cCrL1o

No. 2 – Poland (1994)

This is the second debuting country of 1994 to reach the top ten. And although it was likely that some of the seven debuting countries would reach a high position as more than one fourth of the competing countries took part for the first time, Poland's participation was very impressive. Singer Edyta Górniak, who had finished third in the Baltic Song Contest the year before, was chosen internally to wave the Polish flag in Dublin. With her song To nie ja!, written by Stanislav Syrewicz and Jacek Cygan, she finished second overall behind Ireland only. Nevertheless, the Polish performance was surrounded by a little scandal as the singer had performed the song in English during the rehearsals, which was not allowed according to the rules. However, the delegations decided that Poland should not be disqualified. The Eurovision Song Contest meant the beginning of a successful career as a recording artist for Edyta Górniak. In fact, she went on to become one of the most popular Polish singers ever. Furthermore, she also had minor success with singles in various European countries and South Africa.

The second place in Dublin remains Poland's best result by far. In 15 participations, Poland reached the top ten only one other time, namely in 2003. Furthermore, Poland was eliminated in the semi finals five times including three times in a row between 2005 and 2007.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko9ElaseT3Q

Tomorrow, we will introduce the number one on the list.