Klemen, who will be representing Slovenia at Basel this year, celebrated his victory of the Slovenian national final by parodying all of the winners of the last century. Thus, one of the artists he parodied was Dave Benton, who won in 2001 for Estonia.

To parody the artist, Klemen painted himself black. Benton responded to the parody saying, "[Klemen] parodied all of the winners perfectly, including me. If he had parodied me with a white face, then it wouldn't be correct, right?" He continued, "It was a well made performance, and it doesn't offend me at all." Benton also remarked that people should make the distinction between offense blackface and when darker makeup is being used.

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Relegation will continue until morale improves. That would appear to be the EBU's mantra in 2001. There are now so many countries wanting to participate that seven countries got relegated.

Not France and Spain, even though the EBU's complex table of worthiness suggested that both weren't of sufficient merit. Instead Belgium and Austria were out alongside Switzerland, Finland (sob), Cyprus, Romania and North Macedonia. Losing several of the better national finals with one swipe of the auditors pen.

In their place come Slovenia, Portugal, Poland, Lithuania, Bosnia & Herzegovina and returning to the fold after two years, Greece. With Cyprus's relegation though, this would be the third consecutive year that Greece and Cyprus were not able to give each other twelves points in the scoring.

There is one slight change to the rules this year, and although this is still in the 100% televote era of Eurovision, three countries have been given permission to mix their vote 50/50 between televoting and a national jury. These are Croatia (with Dora being very big on juries), Malta and Greece. I'd have to guess that Greece returning and the introduction of this voting experiment might be linked.

There were also three jury only countries who had telecommunicative problems running a televote (or at least said they did). This was a 100% televote final in name only.

Again the broadcasters decided largely not to brave choosing themselves and offered a whole range of national finals. As in 2000 only three countries internally selected songs and singers, while everyone else held a national final with not a single song selection final among them. We welcome back a competitive Festival da Canção as well as EMA, BH Eurosong and Eurovizijos Atranka. Israel also brought back Kdam and Greece set up Ellinikós Telikós with a new shorter and simpler format to choose their song.

As usual I've included all the Sanremo entries in my considerations. This year North Macedonia also held a traditional Skopje Fest all 20 songs of which are up on YouTube.

FdC had 50 songs in it, as RTP decided to take it out on the road around Portugal. Several other finals also expanded their entry, taking the total number of songs either selected or entering national finals this year is 323. Up a whole 49 songs on 2000, the largest field since 1996.

Hano, Nino | Bosnia & Herzegovina, Eurovision Song Contest 2001

Eurovision 2001 - Mumiy Troll (Russia)

Dave Benton was the first Black person to win the Eurovision Song Contest. He and Tanel Padar won in 2001 for Estonia with the song "Everybody."

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