It’s been a big year for the Eurovision Song Contest in 2013, and here at ESCToday we’ve put together a handy guide to help you look back at all the biggest events of 2013.
January
On January 26 Emmelie de Forest first performed her song Only teardrops to a live television audience in the Dansk Melodi Grand Prix, the Danish national final for Eurovision.
She beat off competition from Simone Egerlis and Mohamed Ali to win the right to represent her country at the Eurovision Song Contest 2013 in Malmö, little did we know at that time that she would also go on to win the entire thing in May.
Also in January we learnt a lot about what to expect from the contest in Sweden. Petra Mede was announced as the competition’s sole host, the first time only a single presenter was used since 1995.
In January the theme art for the Eurovision Song Contest 2013 was revealed. SVT and the EBU presented the We are one slogan and butterfly design, aiming to emphasise the values of diversity and togetherness which the contest represents.
February
The national final season was well underway in February where ten songs across Europe were selected for Malmö in May, plus four more songs were revealed from internally selected artists.
Eyþór Ingi Gunnlaugsson (Iceland), Gianluca Bezzina (Malta), Krista Siegfrieds (Finland), Margaret Berger (Norway), Cascada (Germany), Natalia Kelly (Austria), PeR (Latvia), Koza Mostra (Greece) and Ryan Dolan (Ireland) all won the national finals in their respective countries in February and won the golden ticket to Sweden.
The Spanish public selected their entry for El Sueño de Morfeo, after the band was internally selected by TVE to represent Spain.
Croatia, Georgia, Russia and Cyprus all unveiled their entries for the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest after they all opted to go for internal selections.
Semi-finals, heats and qualifiers took place in countries like Sweden, Estonia and Hungary as the deadline for submitting songs approached.
Continuing to slowly reveal information about the upcoming contest, the Swedish broadcaster and host of the Eurovision Song Contest 2013, SVT, announced that they were going to make a change to the postcards that introduce each act.
Instead of focusing on their own country like Azerbaijan did the year before, the postcards would feature a more personal look at the artists from each country.
March
March has been a very exciting month. It was UK’s turn to present their act. Bonnie Tyler was announced as the next representative for the United Kingdom with the song Believe in me and that was indeed a shock for everyone! During March all the countries concluded with their selections. Some of them were not that sure of their decision and had to replace their songs; FYR Macedonia and Bulgarian entries were replaced.
April
April has been the last month before the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest. The members of the OGAE network delivered their votes for the anual OGAE Poll. Emmelie de Forest won by a landslide the poll. Esctoday had the honour to present the votes in collaboration with OGAE International.
The diamond projet of esctoday, the BigPoll, predicted once again the winner of the contest. For the first time in its history, BigPoll has become a social game where users got the chance to share their Top10 countries with their Facebook friends.
In the meantime, esctoday exclusively delivered interviews with all the participating artists of the 2013 Eurovision.
Check the next two parts of the 2013 in review coming up!
