The Eurovision Song Contest 2000 was the 45th Eurovision Song Contest and was held on 13 May 2000 at the Globe Arena in Stockholm, Sweden, following Charlotte Nilsson's victory in Jerusalem the previous year. It was the first time since 1996 that the contest was held on mainland Europe. The contest was the second to be held in Stockholm, and the fourth held in Sweden. The presenters were Kattis Ahlström and Anders Lundin, and the contest was won by the Olsen Brothers who represented Denmark with the song "Fly on the Wings of Love" (originally: Smuk som et stjerneskud). The song was written by one of the brothers, Jørgen Olsen.
The Globe Arena was, at the time, the largest venue chosen to host the contest with a capacity of 16,000 spectators. The postcards used to introduce each country participating involved Swedish themes that incorporated each nation in some respect. The logo for the contest, a pair of open mouth lips, was chosen by SVT, and was described by its designers as "a sensual, yet stylistically pure mouth representing song, dialogue and speech", and was later one of the possible choices for the generic logo introduced at the 2004 Contest.
The favourite in this year's contest was Estonia, who was also a fan favourite and praised by the press. However, as the voting results came in, Denmark immediately took control of the scoreboard, beating Russia into second place and Latvia into 3rd place.
Slovakia, Greece and Hungary decided not to compete for financial reasons. The countries with the five lowest average scores over the previous five contests who had participated in 1999, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal and Slovenia were excluded meaning that five countries could return. These countries were: Finland, Macedonia, Romania, Russia and Switzerland. Latvia also joined contest as the only country to debut.
For the first time, an official CD compilation was released; it contained all of the songs of the participating nations and was available throughout Europe. Such a disc was attempted in the previous year, however it lacked four of the competing songs.
Read more about Eurovision Song Contest 2000: Results, Scoreboard, Returning Artists, Commentators, Spokespersons
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