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Showing posts with the label nel blu dipinto di blu

EUROVISION: IF YOU WIN, IS IT WORTH COMING BACK? - LYS ASSIA 1956, 1957, 1958

Loreen of Sweden is the 15th previous Eurovision song contest winner who has decided and/or managed give it another try. Only Ireland's Johnny Logan has managed to win twice, as we all know. One can't really do a ranking however as the contest had changed so much from the 1950's with maybe a dozen songs to the approx 40 we have these days. In coming days I will feature the winners who decided to come back after winning the contest as there also many winners who have won with their second or third try.   We start of course with late Lys Assia (1924-2018), who didn't come back once but twice and indeed three years in a row, or the first three editions of the newborn contest representing the first host nation Switzerland. She won the first one, kinda flopped the second one but came back once more and almost won, placing second 3 points short of winner's 27. Italian Domenico Modugno and global hit Volare placed 3rd with only 13, so it was really between Lys and winner...

ITALY AT THE EUROVISION: DOMENICO MODUGNO - NEL BLU, DIPINTO DI BLU (VOLARE) (1958)

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 winner s. Domenico Modugno 's first Eurovision happened after winning Sanremo 1958 with Johnny Dorelli with a little tune called Nel blu, dipinto di blu after the song was nearly rejected from the songs admitted to the festival. Dorelli's performance is forgotten but Modugno's , arms open wide was something that changed the Italian music forever. At the Eurovision the song placed only 3rd out of 10 but went on to sell over 800.000 copies in Italy alone in the coming years, went to Number One in the Billboard Top-100, Top-10 in the UK. Dalida , once again, made the song #1 in France.  The songs has been covered by countless artists ever since, and charted all over the world in various versions as Volare, and has become the best sell...