Eurovision 1976 - Greece

Mariza Koch performing "Panayia Mou, Panayia Mou" ("Virgin Mary, Virgin Mary"), the Greek entry at the 1976 Eurovision Song Contest.

Hmmm...Now, how do you write about this song without inciting a million comments from angry Turks? (incidentally, folks, all opinions are respected, but racist/hateful comments will be removed and the respective users will be banned - this equally goes for my fellow Greeks) OK, here goes: For our second ever entry, following our innocuous debut with Marinella two years before, we couldn't have picked an entry that was more radically different - or more un-typical by ESC standards. A politically-charged entry if there ever was one, this song - written and amazingly performed by legendary Greek singer Mariza Koch (sort of the Greek equivalent of Joan Baez) - was inspired by the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, which caused more than 150,000 Greek-Cypriots becoming refugees and also incited a tidal wave of events in Greece (the military regime that ruled Greece at the time collapsed under the burden of public outcry, since it was held responsible for starting the chain of events that led to the invasion). However, rather than taking a radical pro-Greek or anti-Turkish stance, this song is more of a lament about the destruction and misery caused by the war (the title is a form of religious plea quite common in Greek) which, IMO, makes it transcend its source of inspiration and become a more universal, anti-war song. Of course, in the year of Brotherhood of Man, this seemed totally out of step with the general lightness (especially after being performed right between the likes of "Mata Hari" and "Bump Bump"), but this was really besides the point, since this was less about scoring well with the juries and much more about making what we considered to be an important statement - and, indeed, I won't deny that this is one of our entries that I'm the proudest of, good ranking or not.