Welcome Back, San Marino!

I hope you can pardon the bit of a pause between my last post to now (what can I say...between my full-time job and the craziness of the Holiday season...).  But I'm back in full force, and thrilled to deliver some wonderful Eurovision News to you all.  As of today, Eurovision 2011 will welcome at least 41 competing nations to the stage in Düsseldorf, as we've just heard that San Marino will return after a two-year absence.  The tiny nation made their first (and, until now, only) appearance on the stage in Belgrade back in 2008, with local band MiOdio's slinky, sexy "Complice (Accomplice)", a song that I could easily imagine being played over the opening credits of a James Bond movie.


"Complice" was incredibly underrated in Serbia that year, ending up in dead last place (having only received five points in total, split between the Andorran and Greek audiences).  San Marino, therefore, joined the ignominious club of last-placed Eurovision debuts, alongside Portugal, Turkey, the Czech Republic, and Lithunania.

MiOdio has had continued success in San Marino and Italy, having competed in the San Remo festival with their song "Perdo Contatto" and releasing quite a few great singles beyond that, including the catchy "It's OK" and "Oltre e Nuvole", a take-off of Romania's debut Eurovision entry, of all things.  But we haven't seen a representative from SMRTV since the Belgrade contest.

Now that Italy is back in the game, San Marino will finally have an ally in the competition.  Time will tell who the Sanmarinese representative in Germany will be, but considering that the entire Republic has only about 30,000 residents, they may be prone to scouting out foreign artists, like the Swiss, Luxembourgish, and Monegasque have done in the past.  If they do, that might bring in even more foreign points to the microstate.  As soon as I get more information on the Sanmarinese selection, I'll serve it up to you!

Interesting point of trivia: unless the Vatican joins up, which is highly unlikely, San Marino is the smallest nation, by population, that can possibly take part in Eurovision.  By area, however, Monaco is still smaller (about 1/30th of the size)!