Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

The French know how to make great charity singles. Often in these cases with dozens of singers the song itself may get lost and the voices just don't blend together well but this Je reprends ma route flows away like a real song and is very good. Besides it's collecting money for charity and children it features Eurovision names like Marie Myriam, Anggun and Gerard Lenorman along with M.Pokora, Jenifer, Emmanuel Moire, Lââm and Julie Zenatti just to name a few. More information here . 

The troubled Sopot festival was held again this year after a couple of year's break. The line up included three Eurovision stars; Gerard Lenorman (France), Musiqq (Latvia) and Eric Saade (Sweden) who also took the Amber Nightingale Grand Prix of the festival with Hotter than fire . He also won Top of the Top award.  In all there were 15 artists/countries taking part: Poland, Switzerland, Russia, Portugal, Bulgaria, Iceland, Lithuania, Estonia, Croatia, Hungary, Albania, Ukraine and Spain completing the cast.  For some years Sopot hosted the Intervision Song contest, the anti-Eurovision song contest in the East, where only Finland and Yogoslavia took part of the Eurovision countries, and Finland won twice - both times thanks to Marion Rung (1974, 1980). More information here . 

A rare video has emerged where an 18-year-old Carla Bissi sings her very first Sanremo entry Il mio cuore se ne va in 1972. A year before she had won the new talent contest Castrocaro that gave her a right for a Sanremo adventure. She didn't reach the final but would win Gondola d'Argento in Venice later that year with La festa mia . Three years later she gets her first minor hit with Io voglio vivere , later also covered by another Eurovision star Gerard Lenorman . But only a change of name, Alice Visconti, and change of musical style made her a household name in 1980 with Il vento caldo dell'estate and finally Per Elisa , the Sanremo winner in 1981. But she made her skin once again after a few years and came out with another style. One might like to call that artistic growth and maturity?