The past six years have seen just two good results for Cyprus, 5th in 2004 and 6th in 2002.  Other years they have found themselves in the low teens of the scoring.  Cyprus are renowned in Eurovision for their favour to Greek entries and vice versa.  Each country is guaranteed the elusive "douze points" from the other, regardless of how good or bad the songs are.  Due to their lack of neighbours, Cyprus have difficulty scoring any other points, and therefore need a strong entry to get recognised.  When the Semi was first introduced, Cyprus stormed through with the wonderful ballad from Lisa Andreas, which proved their last commendable result.  Despite brilliant performances in both 2005 and 2006, Cyprus failed to achieve much when it came to scoring, and find themselves in the Semi-Final for a second year in a row.

 

 

Eurovision veteran, Evridiki will return in 2007 after having successfully represented Cyprus in 1992 and 1994.  From the offset, her song ‘Comme Ci Comme Ca’ has been very popular among the fans, leading or nearing the lead in most fan polls.  The song, sung mainly in French is an upbeat rock/pop number, sung with much gusto and enthusiasm on behalf of Evridiki, and all in all, is a very good song.  It’s easy to hum along to, it’s catchy, fun, and among the competition, does have a bit of an edge due to the lack of pop music this year.  Based on the song, I think it would be a shame for ‘Comme Ci, Comme Ca’ not to qualify to the Final – but it may just do a ‘Je t’adore’.  Nonetheless, the song certainly is one to look out for, and I think a first Cypriot victory could be on the cards.

 

 

Though I'm not as convinced as the fans about a victory - Evridiki should have enough support and deliver a strong enough performance to pick up enough votes for qualification.  It's definately not a cert though.  Amidst the competition it's hard to see how this will do in the Final, so I'm placing it with a respectable mid table placing.  All will depend on the draw though, assuming she makes it through.

 

 

After a rather flat vocal and misperformed song (there should have been dancers, not band members) Evridiki shocked most fans and failed to qualify.

 

 

Despite the fact I had this put in my top ten qualifiers, I did always have doubts about the Cypriot entry, and I really wish I’d have stuck with my initial prediction, for then, I would have been spot on.  I always had a niggling feeling that this was doing much, much better in the fan polls than it had any real chance of doing on the night.  Yes, the song was wonderful, yes Evridiki is a great performer, and yes we were guaranteed a great performance – but this was the kind of song where EVERYTHING needs to be perfect if it’s going to work out, and this was one of the higher risk factors in that case.  Evridiki did perform well, but her tuning wasn’t perfect, and while the whole thing was very energetic, it came across as being very static, with Evridiki looking like some sort of possessed fiend.  I should add that I don’t think singing in French hindered this at all (after all, the mostly English speaking country, UK, gave 10 points), moreover I think that the risk simply didn’t work - if the tuning isn’t pristine when it comes to a song like this you usually have to kiss qualification goodbye, which is exactly why I think Cyprus failed to make it through.