“I love you Baku”. It is with these words that the Swedish representative for Eurovision 2012, Loreen, chose to finish her performance on stage in Baku when the latter hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012. Least she knew that Baku, as well as all Europe, will send her love back and inaugurate her as the winner of the contest for the same year. It is thanks to her and her song “Euphoria” that the contest moved to Sweden for its 2013’s edition.
In order to produce the contest, SVT chose the Malmo Arena as the official venue for the event. This decision gave the contest a special record as it is the third contest to be hosted in a city which isn’t the capital since the beginning of the 20th century. Other similar cases occurred when Istanbul and Dusseldorf hosted the contest in 2004 and 2011 respectively. The venue itself has the capability to hold up to 15,500 spectators. As the host of the show, the Swedish broadcaster chose TV personality Petra Mede to host the show all by herself. An act which wasn’t seen in the recent years of the contest and was last seen in 1995.
The subject of graphic design got a close attention that year as SVT decided to have a smaller stage than previous years to improve the viewer’s visibility of the ongoing performance as well as to highlight the performances. This resulted in a stage with movable parts as well as a trail connected to the stage. The logo consisted of a butterfly with multiple textures. These were used to show that even something small can cause great things (As a reference to the butterfly effect). The slogan of the contest was “We Are One”. The concept behind the slogan was to show equality between the participating countries even with the presence of cultural diversity and cultural influence.
The participation rate for that year was the lowest since 2010 as 39 countries competed with Armenia returning after one year of absence and with Poland missing the contest for the second year in a row in addition to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Portugal, Slovakia and Turkey withdrawing. Both Turkey and Slovakia remained absent from all following editions as well. Bosnia and Herzegovina will come back to the contest in 2016 and won’t make any additional appearance since then.
In order to insure the shows to be exciting and to give all contestants an equal chance to stand out, the running order was decided by the producers instead of by a draw like in previous editions of the contest. The decision had various reactions on behalf of both fans and the delegations.
16 countries competed in the first Semi-Final and 17 competed in the second. It is for the first time that no former Yugoslav country qualified to the final with the best result of the bloc being Serbia’s 11th place in the Semi-Final. Other remarkable failures were Bulgaria’s Elitsa Todorova and Stoyan Yankulov who represented the country in 2007 and got the country to the 5th position that year. On the other hand, The Netherlands will qualify for the first time since 2004.
Among the artists from that year, many of them already had a former experience with the contest. As previously mentioned, Bulgaria was represented by the duo of Elitsa Todorova and Stoyan Yankulov who formerly represented it in 2007. San Marino sent Valentina Monetta to raise the republic’s flag for the second time in a row. Nevena Bozovic who formerly represented Serbia in the Junior edition of the contest in 2007 came back as a part of the group “Moje 3”. Albanian representative Bledar Sejko was the on-stage guitarist for Albania in 2011. After being a backing vocalist for Armenia in 2010, Gor Sujyan came back as the lead singer of “Dorians” representing Armenia once again. On behalf of Moldova, the representative for 2012 Pasha Parfeny composed the entry for that year for Aliona Moon who was his backing vocalist the year before. After being a part of the winning group of the 2001’s edition “2XL”, Lauri Pihlap and Kaido Põldma came back as vocalists for Birgita who represented Estonia that year.
But it is after multiple predictions and endless bets sites showing the same result that the crystal microphone was grabbed by no one else but the Danish representative Emmelie De Forest. The Danish entry won both the Semi-Final with 167 points and the Grand Final with 281 points out of which it got 8 sets of 12 points. The only Scandinavian country to give 12 points to the winner was Iceland. The rest of the Scandinavian 12 points were given to Norway who finished 4th. Runner-up Azerbaijan got the most of 12 points with not less than 10 sets of 12 points. The Danish victory was the third victory for the country and their second victory in a row on Swedish soil. The second Danish victory was in the year of 2000 when the contest took place in Stockholm, the Swedish capital.
Take a look at the voting session here:
Take a look at the winning performance here: