September 9th
Can you believe there are eight Eurovision people that celebrate their birthday today? This group includes a Love Actually actor, a fan favorite to win as well as a winner of Barbara Dex Awards.
Kaija Kärkinen, 56
Kaija represented Finland at the 1991 Eurovision Song Contest in Rome. She finished in 20th place out of 22 entries with the song “Hullu yö”.
Michal Wisniewski, 46
Michal has represented Poland at Eurovision twice, as part of the group Ich Troje; both in 2003 and 2006. At the 2003 contest in Riga they performed the song “Keine Grenzen”, finishing in a well deserved 7th place. Three years later he returned to the contest, with the song “Follow My Heart“, hoping to improve on his result from last time. However, on this occasion he *just* failed to qualify for the final, finishing in the dreaded 11th place.
Lucia Moniz, 42
Lucia represented Portugal at the 1996 Eurovision Song Contest in Oslo. She finished in 6th place with the song “O meu coração não tem cor”, giving Portugal their best result in the history of the contest. It stayed this way until Salvador Sobral won the contest in 2017. However, her biggest claim to fame is totally unrelated to Eurovision. Back in 2003 she played the role of Aurelia in the most popular Christmas movie of all times; Love Actually.
Peter Jason, 42
In 2002, Russian invited the boyband Premyer-Ministr (Prime Minister) to go on their behalf to Eurovision. Peter is one of the boys in the band. Therefore they sang “Northen girl” at the stage in Tallinn. They did good, that is ended in 10th place out of 24 acts. There is also an Russian version , “Девочка c севера“, if you are feeling curious.
Francesco Gabbani, 36
Francesco Gabbani represented Italy at the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest in Kyiv. He was a massive pre-contest favorite; “everybody” knew he was gonna win. In the final, however, he only managed to reach a rather disappointing 6th place. From the first time it was performed on the San Remo stage, his “Occidentali’s Karma” was among the fan favorites.
Szilvia Péter Szabo, 36
Hungary picked the folk-pop band “Nox” to reprecent them at Eurovision in 2005. Szilvia was the singer of that band. Thati is why she sang on the stage in Kiev the song “Forogj, világ”. They earned the 12th place at the contest.
Luka Dukaric, 32
Luka is the viola player of the band Quartissimo. Slovenia picked them to go to Russia in 2009. Therefore they performed the song “Love Symphony” with style. Unfortunately for them they did not advance to the final.
Milan Stankovic, 31
Milan represented Serbia at the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest in Oslo. He performed his “Ovo je Balkan” with great energy, finishing 13th in the final, after qualifying from his semi in 5th place. Despite not winning the contest, he still went home with a victory, as he won the Barbara Dex award.
All of us here at escXtra send our warmest birthday wishes to every single of this week’s Eurovision birthday stars!
