This week, we’re going to take a closer look at Georgia. For this series, we take the last 10 entries from the country, in this case, Georgia, however, since they only debuted back in 2007, and did not participate in 2009, we only have 8 entries! On the positive side, this means we can look at every Georgian entry to decide which song is the Best of the Bunch!
The first ever entry from Georgia was called ‘Visionary Dream’, and it was performed by Sopho (the first of many) Khalvashi. On debut, the nation managed to score enough points to send them to the final, where they eventually ended up in a respectable 12th place with 97 points.
In 2008, the honour of representing Georgia went to Diana Gurtskaya, singing her peace anthem ‘Peace will Come.’ She followed on from the success of Sopho in 2007, and qualified for the final to reach 11th place with 83 points.
In 2009, the nation controversially entered a song called ‘We Don’t Wanna Put In’ sung by Stephane and 3G, however due to the political connotations, the EBU banned the song from competing, and the Georgian broadcaster decided to withdraw rather than changing the lyrics of the song. Purely out of fun, here’s the link to the song:
The following year, the nation returned with yet another Sopho – but a different one this time! Sopho Nizharadze brought her classy song ‘Shine’ to the Eurovision stage, and shine she did! In the semi, she came in third, and in the final, comfortably slipped into 9th place with their best points score, 136.
So far so good, Georgia has been successful each year of participation, and it was up to the rock band Eldrine to continue this lucky run. Despite their questionable outfits, the band performed their song ‘One More Day’ with enough power and confidence to earn their spot in the final, again, reaching 9th place, this time with 110 points.
In 2012, Georgia had many firsts – first male front-man to sing at Eurovision, and the first Georgian song to contain lyrics in Georgian. Anri Jokhadze brought charisma to his over the top performance of his song ‘I’m a Joker’, however, for the first time, Georgia did not qualify for the final – reaching 14th place in the semi-final.
Back to business, Georgia then sent another Sopho in 2010 in the hopes of recovering their success. Sopho Gelovani and Nodiko Tatishvili joined forces with the ballad ‘Waterfall.’ The song only just scraped into the final at 10th place, and then achieved 15th place in the final with 50 points.
Now to 2014, where Georgia chose to internally select their artist. They decided to send The Shin and Mariko, who created the psychedelic song ‘Three Minutes to Earth.’ Even with the onstage parachute, the group failed to qualify for the final, ending up in last place in the semi-final with their worst result of 15 points.
That brings us to 2015. With a national final of 5, Georgia’s own Warrior, Nina Sublatti won the opportunity to sing for the country with her song… well, you guessed it, ‘Warrior.’ The power she brought to stage was enough for her to comfortably qualify to the final, and end up in 11th place in the final.
Now it’s your time to decide! Which of the Georgian songs is the best of the bunch? Vote here: