ABBA tune voted Eurovision's best ever
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) -- Swedish pop group ABBA's catchy "Waterloo" hit that won the European Song Contest 31 years ago has been voted the best song in the event's history by viewers across the continent.
The legendary Swedes didn't attend Saturday's jubilee show celebrating 50 years of glamour, glitz and catchy pop tunes.
Finishing second to 1974's "Waterloo" was the 1958 winning tune by Italy's Domenico Modugno. His serenade "Nel Blu di Pinto di Blu" is better known as "Volare."
Third was Ireland's Johnny Logan with the hit "Hold me Now" from 1987. Logan won the contest in 1980.
Viewers in 31 countries watched the show live from the Danish capital and cast their votes on the 14 entries by telephone and through telephone text messages -- the same way the winner is selected in the regular Eurovision contest.
The 14 original video recordings -- including many in scratchy black-and-white -- from the annual contests aired during the two-hour show. Some of the past performers appeared on stage at the end of the songs to the cheers.
Visibly moved, members of the Spanish group Mocedades, which came second in 1973, received a standing ovation from the audience of 6,000 at a downtown Copenhagen concert hall.
So did Logan, the four members of British band Brotherhood of Man, which won the title in 1976; and Turkish Sertab Erener, the 2003 winner, among others.
While the votes were being counted, a dozen other past European Song Contest participants -- including Switzerland's Lys Assia, who in 1956 was the first to win the contest -- performed medleys from the annual competition from the past 50 years with Marie Myriam of France (1977), Israel's Dana International (1998) and Greece's Helena Paparizou, who won the 2005 edition.
The show had been titled "Congratulations," after Cliff Richard's second-placed song in the 1968 contest. Richard did not attend the event.
Each year millions of viewers across Europe and the Middle East watch the Eurovision contest, which was created in 1956 by the European Broadcasting Union.
The show is often derided as a showcase of kitsch, and the winners often fade into obscurity -- although it launched the career of supergroup ABBA.
The Swedish band included musicians Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, and singers Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. The 1974 win rocketed them to worldwide fame that has outlived the band itself, which split up in the early 1980s.
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