An Xtra Happy Birthday, week 41

October 11th 

Today there are six Eurovision Performers that celebrate their birthday. However there are seven Eurovision entries, three of them represented Poland.

Gladys del Pilar, 51

Gladys  placed second in Melodifestivalen in 1994 with the song “The most beautiful thing I know”.  However her chance at Eurovision came in 2002, then she took part with the group Afro-dite and performed “Never Let in Go” in Tallinn, Estonia. At the end of the voting they got 72 points at the Final and therefore landed the 8th place.

Jacek Łągwa, 49

This Eurovision fellow has taken part at Eurovision two times for his country! Maybe the name of Jacek’s band sounds more familiar; Ich Troje. But they took part for Poland in 2003 with “Keine Grezen – Żadnych Granic”. The song was sung in  three languages; Russian, Polish and German. That might have done the trick because the song did well and placed 7th at the contest. Three years later they added two more languages, English and Spanih. Despite that, “Follow My Heart”, did not do better as it one place short of reaching the final.

Isis Gee, 46

Isis represented Poland at the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest in Belgrade. She qualified in tenth place from her semi-final, thus being the last qualifier. In the grand final, on the other hand, she wasn’t as successful. She only finished 24th out of 25 participants. “For Life”, though not being much of a success at Eurovision, nevertheless turned into something of a classic among fans.

Jeronimas Milius, 34

Just like Isis, Jeronimas took part in the 2008 Eurovision in Belgrade. He represented Lithuania with the song “Nomads in the Night”. Unlike Isis, however, he failed to qualify for the grand final. He finished 16th in his semi-final, out of 19 participants. This meant he continued Lihuania’s rather disappointing streak of results at Eurovision. The Baltic country had to wait another eight years before finally achieving a top 10 result.

Margaret Berger, 33

Margaret Berger represented Norway at the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö. After three pretty bad years for Norway, her fourth place hinted at a better Eurovision future for her country. Her cool, contemporary entry, “I Feed You My Love”, was one of the pre-contest favorites. It’s result proved once again that modern pop music has a place in Eurovision.

Elżbieta “Ela” Steinmetz (Elaiza), 26

Ela represented Germany at the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest in Copenhagen. She did so as part of the group Elaiza. They performed the song “Is It Right”. Ela was also one of the songwriters behind the entry. Despite charting both in several countries, it finished in a rather diappointing 18th place. The official video for the song is almost four minutes long.