Morten Thomassen writes today about Italy, who took second place in 2011, the year they returned to the Eurovision song contest after a 14 year absence.  ESC Covers google translated it from Norwegian to English.

After being absent since their last appearance in 1997, it was finally time for a reunion with our Italian friends.

In my opinion, the country that has sent us the songs of the highest average quality.

Someone probably raised a few eyebrows when the resurrection as an ESC nation was done with a jazz song by an artist with a particularly rusty voice.

Madness or genius, many would say, but it was rewarded with second place, admittedly 32 points behind first place.

Raphael Gualazzi won a superior vote by the juries, it was the people who “failed” and only gave him 11th place, then you simply don’t win.

Azerbaijan, who won, got second place with the jury and first place with the people, so they were thus a deserved winner.

And for those who prefer Italian jazz to smooth Swedish pop, they probably smiled at the fact that our Swedish friends were four points short of silver this year.

Young Mr. Gualazzi, whose first name is Raffaele, released his first CD in 2005 and he made it to ESC-2011 by winning the San Remo Festival that same year.

He later tried his hand at the same festival in both 2013, 2014 and 2020, and if you believe Wikipedia, the song from the latter festival is the last thing he has released of music.

However, there is every reason to believe that he is an active artist and who knows, maybe a new trip into the ESC world is tempting for this guy?