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Ukraine wins Eurovision 2016

Jamala wins with her haunting "1944", while Dami Im finishes second for Australia.

 

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Ukraine has won the Eurovision Song Contest for 2016.

Jamala won with her unconventional and haunting 1944, scoring 534 votes.

“I really want peace and love to everyone. Thank you Europe!” she said.

In a nail-biting vote, Australia’s Dami Im came second with 511 votes, but was the preferred choice of the European juries. Televoting and bookies favourite Russia was placed fourth with 491 votes.

Dami Im was note perfect with her performance of Sound of Silence.

Asked what she would do after the jury votes, Dami said she would “Go and have a lemonade with my crew!”

Lee Lin Chin in Sydney announced the Australian jury vote for Belgium, also the choice of the public vote.

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At her Press Conference, Jamala said, “I don’t have the words to describe my feelings in English. It was amazing. It was crazy. I was sure that, if you sing about truth, it can really touch people. And I was right.

“I was so appreciated by the warm audience in the Globe Arena. It was a great show – thanks to Stockholm and the organisers of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest! I was so happy to enjoy those three minutes every day. It is an honour, and a big responsibility that you voted for me. Thank you!

“I am very happy for all Australians who voted for me. Australia competed with a wonderful and strong song. If I had voted tonight, I had voted for Australia.”

Jamala is a Ukrainian singer, composer and actor. She performs music that includes elements of such styles as soul, jazz, funk, folk and electronic. The singer became popular after her participation at The New Wave in 2009. In 2011, she performed her cheerful song Smile in the Ukrainian selection but didn’t win the final. In this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, Jamala will perform her own composition, 1944.

This post updates.

18 Responses

  1. Well done Dami what a wonderful performance of one of the better songs this year, I kept jumping up every time we received a 12. Congratulations to the Ukraine while I think there were better songs,the meaning of the song about her grandmothers experience during 1944 very moving. Belgium,Spain and Bulgaria should feel a little bit robbed as their entries were great and I thought the United Kingdom deserved to rank higher this year.

    The host this year were wonderful witty and charming, the production value on this event is amazing. Julia and Sam wonderful once again had me laughing through the whole 3 broadcasts,Julia swooning over the French entrant I was right with you girlfriend.

    Looking forward to next year in Kiev.

  2. Goes to show there is no set formula to win Eurovision. Russia tried to emulate other recent winners, but there is still a place for quality native language performances.
    That said it would be interesting to see all the nations send their campest attempts to Russia.

  3. I thought the Ukraine song was seriously underwhelming. And I’m not just saying that because Australia came second lol.
    Interesting to see the difference in voting between the juries and the public vote. Poland for example got almost nothing from the juries but stormed back with the public vote. Bonkers.

      1. Well it sort of changed as now each country gives double the votes as opposed to a maximum of twelve point in prior years. The public vote and the judges vote were combined and divided by two or the mean was taken. Eg if Australia got 12 from the public and 6 from the judges then we most likely would have gotten 7 or eight points depending on where the other countries sat as well. It was more complicated and you never found out the separate rankings before. So who knows what would have been the result if it stayed the same but congrats to Dami anyway, it was an exciting result.

        1. The EBU has released all televoting and jury results for each country (and yes you can see which Australian jury member voted for what), and people have already done the stats to see if the winner would be different and by all accounts Australia would indeed have won had last years system been in place. But it matter little of course.

          1. I made a spreadsheet to work out if we would’ve won, and my maths shows that australia would have lost by only 10 points because i think if there is a tie between countries based on point ranking the country with the higher televote gets the higher position, unless i’m mistaken?

      2. The main affects of the change is only the Top 10 results for Jury and Televote counted, whilst previously all countries were ranked and then the combined ranking provided the top 10, with the televote used to break any ties.

        As Australia didn’t pick up a huge amount of 12s but picked up votes lower down the order this affected the result.

  4. When was the last time I got up at 6am on a Sunday morning to watch a singing contest? When was the last time I watched any singing contest at any time? Never x 2.
    More than excellent Dami. Congratulations. And well done SBS.

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