Greece's Only Crown

MAY 15 2005 · 12:15

Helena Paparizou · "My Number One" · Greece · 2005 Placement: 1st · Language: English · Composers: Christos Dantis, Natalia Germanou · Venue: Palace of Sports · Host: Kyiv, Ukraine · Type: winner · Broadcast: HD On May 21, 2005, at the Palace of Sports in Kyiv — Ukraine hosting for the first time on the back of Ruslana's win — Helena Paparizou walked onto a stage dressed in a short, glittering gold-white dress and led a quartet of male dancers through a tightly choreographed ethno-pop number. 'My Number One' opened with an unmistakable bouzouki hook over a four-to-the-floor dance beat, placing Greek folk instrumentation inside a glossy modern pop production. Paparizou, a Greek-Swedish singer already well known in Greece as a member of the duo Antique (who had themselves placed third at Eurovision in 2001), sang in confident English with a recognisably Mediterranean phrasing. The choreography was sharp, the dancers performing lifts and stylised hand movements drawn loosely from Greek dance tradition. The production values were noticeably high for Greek Eurovision, benefiting from years of investment by ERT into their national selection. When the votes came in, Greece pulled ahead in a tight field, reportedly winning on the strength of distributed televote support across most of Europe rather than a single regional bloc. Paparizou, on stage during the reprise, appeared almost disbelieving — Greece had been competing at Eurovision since 1974 without ever winning, often finishing mid-table with respectable but unrewarded entries. Context Kyiv hosting Eurovision 2005 was itself a political moment. The Orange Revolution had concluded only months earlier with Viktor Yushchenko's inauguration, and Ukraine briefly suspended visa requirements for Eurovision visitors as a gesture of European openness. Greece in 2005 was riding high on the afterglow of the Athens 2004 Olympics; Greek cultural confidence, and the national broadcaster ERT's willingness to invest seriously in Eurovision, had been growing year on year. 'My Number One' was a product of that investment — a song explicitly designed to win, developed through a Greek national final with production support and international songwriting input. The contest was in its fully televoted, semi-final-equipped modern era, and ethno-pop fusions in the Ruslana lineage were dominant. Legacy It remains, as of this writing, Greece's only Eurovision victory. The win brought the 2006 contest to Athens and established Paparizou as one of the most commercially successful Greek pop artists of her generation, with a career that continued robustly across Greece, Sweden and the broader Mediterranean market. 'My Number One' itself became a staple of Greek nightlife and wedding playlists, and a reference point in any discussion of successful ethno-pop Eurovision formulas. More broadly, the win confirmed that the template Ruslana had established was repeatable — that a Mediterranean or Eastern European country could, with sufficient production investment and a well-chosen folk-pop fusion, win the contest outright. Mythology Paparizou is sometimes misremembered as Greek-born; she was born and raised in Sweden to Greek parents and built her early career between the two countries. The song is also occasionally described as sung in Greek; it was performed in English, with Greek instrumental elements rather than Greek lyrics.