London Greek Radio

Well, it felt like a sense of nervy excitement at about 9:50pm on Thursday night and much relief too, that our Cypriot tune had in fact qualified, pleasing all of the fans…

Cyprus has made it through to the Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest which is massively historic in the context of this year’s 60th mile-stone of the music event.

John Karayiannis with his heart on sleeve, showing a little of his fragile vulnerability sung his honesty, sweet melody track ‘One Thing I Should I Have Done‘, to take votes off both public and that of the professional jurors for the Top 10 qualifying spaces. It has a radio friendly feel which was only enhanced by that of John’s clear tone strong vocals to the point, you felt he believed every word or line he uttered in the three minutes of his song.

Our tune was penned by Mike Connaris, a London Cypriot song-writer, previously having brought his Top 5th in 2004’s Lisa Andreas entry ‘Stronger Every Minute’ which equals our best ever result this far.

John, a 20-year-old singer from Limassol, with his black thick framed spectacles, took to Vienna’s Wiener Stadthalle Arena, minimalist staging, with a lovely black and white screen affect at the song’s intro, with explosions of colour in the back-drop, as the tune climaxes to the last note.

John speaking after he found out his result was clearly excited and in awe of achieving fine outcome. ”We are through to the final guys!!! Wowww!! So excited and thankful for all the support I have received lately by each and every of you!! Really appreciate it!! Xxx”.

It goes without saying it’s a great feeling of elation to have our Cypriot nation in the final after a long history of mixed results, you have to go back to 2012’s Ivi Adamou ‘La La Love’ for actually the last qualifier of theirs, and it’s a strong come-back after taking one-year’s hiatus from the event in Copenhagen.

At 1am this Friday morning, the official draw gave Cyprus 11th in the final, while Greece’s Cypriot female soloist Maria-Elena Kyriakou is performing 15th, with ballad ‘One Last Breath‘ who was through in the first of semi-finals on Tuesday night.

So the finalist line-up comprises the acts by Sweden, Latvia, Norway, Azerbaijan, Slovenia, Israel, Montenegro, and Lithuania including Estonia, Serbia, Georgia, Belgium, Hungary, Albania, Romania and special guest status’s Australia.

As one of the ‘Big Five’ countries, the UK entry with Electro Velvet has gained automatic qualification to the final alongside Spain, Germany, France, Italy and current title holders Austria.

Well done to the whole Cypriot delegation for giving us something to celebrate, with Evi Papamichael and Klitos Klitou and others, working the last months for this result.

The Grand Final takes place this Saturday at 8pm, you can watch it on BBC1, with tele-voting and jury deciding where exactly each nation finishes.

For those of you who missed it, this is John Karayiannis performing ‘One Thing I Should Have Done’ for the Cyprus entry live at the 2015 Eurovision Semi-Final 2:

Article written by Tony Neophytou