Believe Me: Russia's Mid-2000s Eurovision Ascent

MAY 15 2004 · 12:05

Julia Savicheva · "Believe Me" · Russia · 2004 Placement: 11th · Score: 67 · Language: English · Composers: Maxim Fadeev, Marina Boroditskaya · Venue: Abdi İpekçi Arena · Host: Istanbul, Turkey · Type: performance innovation · Broadcast: HD On May 15, 2004, at the Abdi İpekçi Arena in Istanbul — Turkey's first Eurovision as host after Sertab Erener's 2003 victory — the teenage Russian singer Yulia Savicheva, then nineteen, performed 'Believe Me' for Russia in the first Eurovision final to follow a semi-final qualifying round. The song was composed by Maxim Fadeev, Savicheva's producer and one of the architects of the Russian pop industry's early-2000s export push. The staging was deliberately Western-pop in its register: Savicheva in a structured strapless outfit, three male dancers, a chorus and bridge designed to read clearly to juries who had no Russian. She finished eleventh with sixty-seven points — a solid mid-table result that formed a data point in a visible mid-decade trajectory. Russia had finished third in 2003 with t.A.T.u., would finish second in 2006 with Dima Bilan's first attempt, and would finally win in 2008 with Bilan's second. Savicheva's 2004 is the forgotten middle act in this ascent. Context Eurovision 2004 introduced the semi-final format for the first time. Russia had participated intermittently since 1994 and had spent most of the 1990s in the middle of the scoreboard, but the arrival of the televoting era and the rise of the industrialised Russian pop-export industry shifted the country's capacity noticeably. Legacy Savicheva's 2004 result is now remembered mainly as a waypoint in Russia's mid-2000s Eurovision ascent, which crested with Dima Bilan's 2008 Moscow-hosted victory and declined after the 2014 Crimea annexation. Mythology Russia's Eurovision trajectory is sometimes narrated as a direct line from t.A.T.u. 2003 to Bilan 2008; Savicheva's 2004 complicates that story with a more gradual improvement.