Rock Me: Yugoslavia's Only Eurovision Win, Two Years Before the War

MAY 15 1989 · 12:05

Riva · "Rock Me" · Yugoslavia · 1989 Placement: 1st · Language: Croatian · Composers: Rajko Dujmić, Stevo Cvikić · Venue: Palais de Beaulieu · Host: Lausanne, Switzerland · Type: winner · Broadcast: color crt On the evening of May 6, 1989, at the Palais de Beaulieu in Lausanne, a five-member Croatian band called Riva — fronted by the bright, distinctive voice of Emilija Kokić — took the stage twenty-second and last in the running order with a sharply constructed Yugoslav-pop song called 'Rock Me,' performed in Croatian. The arrangement was tight, the hook immediate, the English-language title deliberately legible to international voters who would process the rest of the lyric as atmospheric rather than semantic. By the close of voting the song had accumulated 137 points and Yugoslavia had won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first — and, as history would have it, the only — time. Kokić led the band into the winner's reprise performing an English-language version of the chorus. The victory was received jubilantly across Yugoslavia: Zagreb would host the 1990 contest, and Yugoslav federal television framed the win as a multi-ethnic national success. Within two years, the country would no longer exist. The Yugoslav Wars began in June 1991, Croatia declared independence the same month, and by the time Eurovision 1993 opened in Millstreet the broadcaster Riva had represented — JRT — had dissolved, and the competing post-Yugoslav states were entering the contest through a special pre-qualifying round as newly independent participants. Riva's Lausanne win thus remains one of Eurovision's most temporally specific victories — a win for a country that would cease to exist within its own winning-host cycle. Context Eurovision 1989 was held in Switzerland following Céline Dion's 1988 victory for the Swiss, and the Palais de Beaulieu staging emphasized clean modern-pop production values typical of the late-1980s contest. Yugoslavia had participated in Eurovision since 1961 as a socialist federation coordinated through JRT (Jugoslovenska Radio-Televizija), which rotated selection responsibilities among its constituent republic broadcasters. Riva was a Croatian group; their entry had been selected through Croatian-broadcaster HRT's internal process within the Yugoslav selection. The 1989 contest ran parallel to the final stages of the Cold War — the Berlin Wall would fall six months later, in November — and Eurovision was just beginning to feel the pressure of the imminent Eastern European political transformation that would, within five years, triple the contest's participant count. Legacy Yugoslavia hosted Eurovision in Zagreb in 1990 — the contest's first and only visit to the country. By the time the 1991 contest was held in Rome, Yugoslavia was publicly fracturing; by 1993, it no longer existed in its 1989 form. Riva's win remains the only Eurovision victory for any Yugoslav or post-Yugoslav entity; none of Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, or Montenegro has won as independent states, though Marija Šerifović came closest with Serbia's 2007 victory — the first win by a formerly-Yugoslav state. Emilija Kokić continued a Croatian music career after the war and has appeared at Eurovision anniversary events. 'Rock Me' is widely considered one of the strongest pure-pop winners of the late 1980s contest and is often cited in retrospectives as the highest peak of Yugoslav popular music's international reach. Mythology Riva is sometimes described as a Croatian band competing for Croatia; in 1989 Croatia was still a Yugoslav constituent republic and Riva's entry was formally Yugoslav. The English-language version performed during the reprise is often remembered as the competition entry itself; the contest performance was in Croatian, with English used only for the post-win reprise. Yugoslavia's participation is sometimes described as having ended with the 1991 war; Yugoslavia technically continued in reduced form (as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) through the 1990s but did not compete at Eurovision again until 2004 as Serbia and Montenegro.