Cyprus in the Eurovision Song Contest 1989

Eurovision Song Contest 1989
Country	Cyprus
National selection
Selection process	Internal selection
Selection date(s)	Song: 6 February 1989 Artist: 27 March 1989
Selected entrant	Fanny Polymeri and Yiannis Savvidakis
Selected song	"Apopse as vrethoume"
Selected songwriter(s)	Efi Meletiou Marios Meletiou
Finals performance
Final result	11th, 51 points
Cyprus in the Eurovision Song Contest
◄1988 • 1989 • 1990►

Cyprus was represented by Fanny Polymeri and Yiannis Savvidakis, with the song "Apopse as vrethoume", at the Eurovision Song Contest 1989, which took place on 6 May in Lausanne. The song was chosen after an internal selection organised by broadcaster CyBC.

CyBC opened a submission period for Cypriot artists and composers to submit songs until 7 January 1989.^[1] By the end of the submission period, 56 submissions had been received, of which three were invalid.^[2][3]

The internal selection was held on 6 February 1989 in the CyBC buildings in Nicosia.^[2][4] The results were decided by a 14-member jury consisting of five CyBC employees and nine people in the music industry.^[5] The selection consisted of five stages and lasted over nine hours, from around 9:00 EET until 18:10 EET.^[5][6] In the first stage, the submitted recordings of all 56 songs were presented, the invalid entries were removed from the competition, and each jury member chose their sixteen favourite songs, after which the votes were collected and the sixteen songs with the highest amount of votes progressed to the second stage.^[5] In the second stage, the sixteen songs were presented again and then whittled down to eight songs, which were then whittled down to four and then two songs.^[3][5] The winner was chosen out of the final two songs, however the rules of the internal selection stated that it would not provide a runner-up song.^[4] The winner of the internal selection was revealed in a news broadcast directly at 20:30 EET.^[6]

Marios Meletiou had an agreement with the singer of the recording of "Apopse as vrethoume" that was submitted to the internal selection that they would remain anonymous. Thus, it is unknown who the original performer of "Apopse as vrethoume" was.^[3] Shortly after the internal selection, Marios Meletiou entered discussions with CyBC to find a suitable performer of "Apopse as vrethoume" for the 1989 Eurovision Song Contest.^[7] The CyBC considered three main candidates: Konstantina Konstantinou, Andri Konstantinou, and Anna Vissi.^[8] Marios Meletiou favoured Anna Vissi as the performer of the song and sent a recording of "Apopse as vrethoume" to Anna Vissi for her to decide if she would want to perform it at the Eurovision Song Contest, however she responded in the negative.^[9][10] CyBC then sent a delegation to Athens (including Marios Meletiou) to make contacts with record labels and Greek artists, while also contacting Cypriot artists living in Cyprus, to find a suitable performer for "Apopse as vrethoume".^[10] During this time, it was decided to have the song performed by a duo or trio and Marios Meletiou proposed Fanny Polymeri and Yiannis Savvidakis as the performers of the song.^[11][12] On 27 March 1989, a committee at CyBC listened to recordings of several candidate artists and selected Fanny Polymeri and Yiannis Savvidakis as the singers of "Apopse as vrethoume".^[12]

On the night of the final Fanny Polymeri and Yiannis Savvidakis performed seventeenth in the running order, following Spain and preceding Switzerland. At the close of voting "Apopse as vrethoume" had received 51 points, placing Cyprus 11th out of 22 countries. The Cypriot jury awarded its 12 points to Greece.^[13]  

Points awarded to Cyprus[14] Score Country 12 points  Iceland 10 points 8 points  Denmark 7 points  Greece 6 points  Portugal  United Kingdom 5 points 4 points   Switzerland 3 points  Israel 2 points  Austria  Italy 1 point  Ireland

Points awarded by Cyprus[14] Score Country 12 points  Greece 10 points  Austria 8 points  Sweden 7 points  France 6 points  Italy 5 points  Yugoslavia 4 points  Spain 3 points  Finland 2 points  United Kingdom 1 point  Germany