From 2004 to 2006, Serbia and Montenegro used Evropesma as their national final for Eurovision. Twice, the winning song went to Eurovision, and to this day, Serbia and Montenegro is the only country in Eurovision history to have never placed out of the top ten. The third edition, however, is a far different story. Although a result was allegedly reached and a winning song chosen, the winner of Evropesma 2006 never ended up going to Eurovision.
The winning song of a national final not going to Eurovision is hardly a new concept. Whether because the winning artist did not want to participate in the contest or because the song was found out to have been previously released, it has happened more times than expected. There was nothing expected about Evropesma 2006, or, it could be argued, about Evropesma. All three editions were rife with controversy (and full of artists who would eventually represent former Yugoslav nations at Eurovision). This is a look at Evropesma and the drama that would soon become synonymous with it.
The beginning
An interesting fact about Serbia and Montenegro’s Eurovision journey is that they were rumoured to have actually been scheduled to make their debut in 2003, not 2004 as they eventually did. A video on YouTube devoted to ‘lost’ or withdrawn entries includes the 2003 Beovizija winner, ‘Čija si’ performed by Toše Proeski (who would go on to represent North Macedonia in 2004) as the Serbo-Montenegrin song for 2003. It claims that, because of the relegation system in place at the time and the fact that too many countries wanted to take part in Eurovision, Serbia and Montenegro had to wait a year to debut.
Whatever the reason was, as we know, Serbia and Montenegro made their debut at Eurovision 2004 rather triumphantly. With the song ‘Lane Moje’ performed by Željko Joksimović, they managed to win the first-ever Eurovision semi-final and place second overall. The road to that silver medal is far more interesting than the accomplishment itself.
A triumphant debut
2004 was a year where Serbia and Montenegro technically had two national selections. Evropesma 2004 had twenty-four songs competing, nineteen from the Serbian side and just five from the Montenegrin side. However, the Serbian songs did not all come from Serbian national final Beovizija. Only four of them did. The other fifteen were all internally selected by broadcaster UJRT, including the eventual winner, ‘Lane Moje’. The lineup included several artists who would go on to actually perform at Eurovision: Sergej Ćetković (Montenegro 2014), Knez (Montenegro 2015), and Jelena Tomašević (Serbia 2008), as well as Extra Nena, who represented Yugoslavia in 1992. The entire show is available via YouTube, including the voting, which gives us an idea of how the selection actually went.
As you can see, ‘Lane Moje’ won with close to double the points of the runner-up song. However, what these screencaps do not show you is that three out of five songs in the top five were from Beovizija or submitted by the Serbian broadcaster. A full chart that is available on Wikipedia details the originating broadcasters of all the songs.
Interestingly enough, only one of the songs that went through Beovizija that year managed to place in the top five. An explanation could be the majority of songs in Evropesma being UJRT internal selections. It is curious, though, that an internally-selected song won the show with five sets of ten points from five of the eight juries (ten being the maximum score) and ten points from the televote (which acted as the ninth jury).
The drama continues…
The following year, three out of five songs in the top five were from Montenegro, a sort of reversal of the previous year’s results. Again, there were multiple artists who would go on to represent former Yugoslav nations at Eurovision who participated: Jelena Tomašević (Serbia 2008), Stevan Faddy (Montenegro 2007), and Andrea Demirović (Montenegro 2009). Most notably, Marija Šerifović, who won the Contest in 2007 for Serbia with the song ‘Molitva’, took part, although she only managed to place nineteenth in a field of twenty-four with the song ‘Ponuda’.
The real drama was at the top of the scoreboard.
Montenegrin boy-band No Name won Evropesma 2005 with their song ‘Zauvijek moja’ (whose melody was sampled in the 2016 interval act song ‘Love Love Peace Peace’), but there was controversy to this result. In fact, before the final even occurred, there was controversy when Željko Joksimović, composer of the song ‘Jutro’, performed by Jelena Tomašević, organised a winner’s party for the artist. Considering that the song placed second overall in Evropesma, it wasn’t exactly a reach to say that the song could have won. However, there were oddities in the jury voting. Montenegrin juries gave no points to ‘Jutro’, nor to most of the other Serbian songs. In fact, the Serbian song receiving the most points from the Montenegrin juries (‘Nevidljiva’ by Ana Cvetković) placed tenth. Below are the full results of Evropesma 2005.
There is also the matter of the televotes, which served as the ninth ‘jury’. ‘Zauvijek moja’ obtained nearly twice as many televotes as ‘Jutro’, the runner-up. This is not visible in the voting itself, as the televotes are only given in the Eurovision-style points system of 12 to 1 point, but it is further detailed on the Wikipedia page. ‘Jutro’ earned just shy of seventeen thousand televotes. ‘Zauvijek moja’, however, earned close to thirty-three thousand. The judge read out the names of the phone companies that assisted in the televote, not the televote numbers. We were able to discern the following three company names in the video:
- ProMonte (Montenegro)
- Moneta/Telekom (Montenegro)
- Telekom Srbija (Serbia)
This is hardly a confirmation of the rumour that the televote was free in Montenegro but not in Serbia, but it still raises some suspicion. Whatever the case was, the song went on to perform in the grand final in Kyiv (thanks to the auto-qualifier rule that existed in the days of the single semi) and placed seventh. This was the last song that Serbia and Montenegro ever sent to Eurovision, but that does not mean that they did not try one more time.
The national final that broke a country?
Evropesma 2006 featured two participants who would go on to perform at Eurovision: Stevan Faddy (Montenegro 2007) and Tijana Dapčević (North Macedonia 2014). It also saw the return of No Name, who were now attempting to represent the country with the upbeat song ‘Moja ljubavi’. The Evropesma final happened in Belgrade, Serbia, at the Sava Centar on 11 March 2006—the same day that former president Slobodan Milošević died of a heart attack while on trial for war crimes. It was hardly helping the situation that was soon to occur as the results began. Much like the 2005 voting, the Montenegrin jurors gave no points to the two Serbian songs that would eventually reach the top five. There is full video of the voting available on YouTube.
The booing began almost immediately when the (mostly Serbian) audience realised that the Montenegrin juries were essentially only giving points to Montenegrin songs. When the final results were in and Serbian favourite ‘Ludi letnji ples’ lost by a four-point margin, a good deal of the audience simply got up and left (visible at 10:07 in the above video). Those who did stay began to chant the name of the runner-up artist, Flamingosi, as the hosts attempted to get No Name back onstage to perform a winner’s reprise of their song. People began to throw objects, including glass beer bottles, at the stage in anger (visible at 12:07). Eventually, Flamingosi did come out onto the stage and perform an impromptu reprise of ‘Ludi letnji ples’, much to the delight of the audience.
The aftermath
In the end, Serbia and Montenegro withdrew from the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest due to an inability to agree on what to do with the results of Evropesma 2006. They did go on to vote in the Contest, with spokeswoman (and 2008 host) Jovana Janković seeming to predict Serbia’s 2007 win when she gave the votes:
“So, as you know, we don’t have a song for you this year, but we promise that, next year, we will give you the best one.”
— Jovana Janković, 2006
The same year, Serbia and Montenegro broke apart and became independent countries, and joined Eurovision the following year. Montenegro failed to qualify from what is commonly called the ‘death semi’. Serbia, however, not only won the semi-final, but went on to win the entire Contest. Evropesma faded into the background, a defunct national final. Its two sub-national finals, Beovizija and Montevizija still occurred on and off, although Beovizija made a comeback in 2018. Although drama-filled, it is undeniable that quality songs came out of Evropesma. Serbia and Montenegro’s (admittedly short-lived) Eurovision participation is truly one for the history books.