Morten Thomassen writes today about Russia claiming second spot at the 2000 Eurovision song contest. ESC Covers google translated it from Norwegian to English.

When we entered a new millennium, we also entered a new era in our beloved competition.

Until then, the results list had been dominated by Western countries, but this was now to change.

More and more, the TV stations realized that if there were to be results, more and more energy had to be spent on the visual part of the song.

Now I’m not going to blame the Russian Alsou for starting this, but together with two handsome dancers she climbed all the way up to second place in the year 2000.

However, there were a whole 40 points up to two grown guys from Denmark who just stood there with their guitars and even though Russia filed a complaint about the fact that these guys had used vocoders on stage, that complaint was not upheld.

Down to Latvia in third place, there were 19 points and there was little doubt about this country’s first silver place.

The song “Solo” that Alsou sang was also an early version of the fact that many participating countries now use, namely to “buy” a song by composers/lyricists who are not from the country the singer is participating for.

Here, a good location was much more important than something home-made, if you understand the drawing.

Alsou’s full name is Alsou Ralifovna Abramova and she has three children, I read.

After his ESC success, Alsou has tried very hard to establish an international career, but somehow it has never turned out that way.

It has ended with very moderate success, although she has had greater success in her home country.

We also saw her as one of the hosts during the ESC final in 2009 and she thus got to congratulate Alexander Rybak on his victory on stage in Moscow.

And with the current situation, I probably think that there won’t be any more reunions on the ESC stage for this lady, even if she has an active music career.