Eurovision Song Contest 1995

The Eurovision Song Contest 1995 was the 40th Eurovision Song Contest and was held on 13 May 1995 in the Point Theatre in Dublin, Ireland. The presenter was Mary Kennedy. To date, this year's competition was also the last one with only one host. This contest broke the chain of victories that Ireland enjoyed in 1992, 1993, and 1994. This was Ireland's 3rd year in succession to host the contest - and to mark the 40th show, it was opened with a 4-minute retrospective showing images from the contest's history. The Norwegian group Secret Garden was the winner of this contest with the mostly instrumental song, "Nocturne". Incidentally, Secret Garden's violinist was Fionnuala Sherry, who is Irish.

Two of Ireland's winners attended the contest; Dana, who was Ireland's first winner, winning the contest in 1970 with "All Kinds of Everything", and Mr Eurovision himself, Johnny Logan, winning the contest as a singer in 1980 and 1987 ("What's Another Year?" and "Hold me Now" respectively), and also for writing Linda Martin's 1992 winning song "Why Me?". It was his birthday that night, but according to host Kennedy, "He wouldn't say which one"! Nonetheless, the audience sang "Happy Birthday" for him, assisted by the orchestra.

After winning the 1994 contest, RTÉ were worried about whether they could afford to host a third consecutive contest in 1995. The BBC had offered to take on the responsibility of hosting the contest, and had even proposed that the contest be staged as a joint production in Belfast, capital of Northern Ireland. In the end RTÉ decided to stage the contest on its own. However they did ask the EBU that, should Ireland win once more, that they would not be expected to host the event for a fourth year in a row.

The favourite to win the contest, according to bookmakers, was Sweden with the pop-ballad "Se på mej". Other countries in contention for the win were Denmark, Israel, Spain, and the eventual winner, Norway. The winning song was something new at Eurovision in that it contained only 24 words accompanied by long violin solos. The United Kingdom contributed a modern rap number, while the previous year’s runner-up, Poland, went for something that completely contrasted with their début entry.

After the voting was completed, Norway was the winner with 148 points, followed by Spain's "Vuelve Conmigo" with 119 points, and Sweden gaining 100 points.

The stage was designed by Alan Farquharson who also designed the Millstreet 93 set. Although it was quite dark and often gloomy in appearance, it did form the basis for a spectacular opening whereby a giant screen rotated to reveal the presenter who descended a stairway which ultimately disappeared to allow for the arrow shaped stage to come together amid fireworks. The interval act consisted of several well known Irish performers including Clannad, Brian Kennedy (who would go on to actually represent Ireland 11 years later), and was composed by leading musician Michael O'Suilleabhan.

The EBU decreased the number of participants back to 23 to make sure the show wouldn't last longer than 3 hours. 5 of the 6 countries that were relegated the previous year came back to the contest, Luxembourg decided to stop participating completely and Italy withdrew voluntarily, as in 1994.

There was much speculation in Ireland as to whether RTÉ had deliberately chosen a song perceived as not having a good chance of winning in order to avoid hosting the contest for a fourth time in a row - although this was never verified. This rumour did, however inspire a popular episode of Father Ted. In any event, RTÉ ended up hosting the contest once again in 1997.