ITALY AT THE EUROVISION: GIGLIOLA CINQUETTI

ITALY AT THE EUROVISION: GIGLIOLA CINQUETTI - SI (1974)

Italy took its well deserved third victory - finally! - at the Eurovision song contest 2021. Over the years several other Italian entries would have been worthy winners. In this series I will go through all of them from the worst ranking to the winners.

Gigliola Cinquetti (73) , the 1964 winner returned to Eurovision this time as a Canzonissima winner but Italians didn't get to see that until a month later as at the time there was a referendum on divorce and Rai was afraid the song title Si (Yes) could be seen as political. She placed second right after a certain Abba and almost became the first double winner and went on to record the song in English (UK #8), French, Spanish and German.

Gigliola was only 16 when she first won Castrocaro, then Sanremo, then Eurovision back in 1964. She scored hits in a steady flow in the 1960's and in the 1970's she was already an international star singing in multiple languages including Japanese. As an artistic soul she also set to design some of her record covers, wrote books for children and after a break to have two children she returned but this time as a tv-presenter.

A total of 12 Sanremos to date with two wins, one second and one third place, 33 studio albums, 12 films, and a lot of television until these days including of course hosting the 1991 Eurovision with Toto Cutugno - one could say she saved the possible of that contest's hosting - she's still pretty much a household name in Italy.

Sanremo 1974 was won by Iva Zanicchi with Ciao cara, come stai?

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Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

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