Eurovision 2002 - Number 21 - Maria-Louiza & Not 4 Sale - "2 Be Together"

Greece has worked it out. Apart from a brief blip towards the end of the 1990s while they worked out how to deal with televoting, whether it's internally selecting or recruiting acts for a national final, ERT know what it wants and what the Eurovision voting public will vote for.

Take 2 Be Together. It's written by Antonis Pappas & Nikos Terzis, the team who wrote Elina Constantopoulou's Pia Prosefhi from 1995 and Antique's Die For You from last year. Nikos was originally one of Kati Garbi's backing singers at Eurovision 1993. Maria-Louiza Vassilopoulou herself made it to the final of Ellinikós Telikós 2001. This is a team that have pedigree.

Like Die For You, this is a high energy danceable floor-filler, a pulsating plea of desire that keeps much of what made Die For You successful. It's 100% less Swedish in terms of creative input although this would absolutely fit into Melfest without anyone suspecting it was Greek. You could almost guarantee this would win and then go on to do well at Eurovision.

Except that Ellinikós Telikós this year is exceptionally strong. Not only is there serious competition on the ballad side of things, but there's another upbeat Melfest-y entry. And then there's this self-written stomp about passwords from a UK educated mechanical engineer and his friends who look like they indulge in future urban-warfare LARPing at the weekends...

2 Be Together may have the pedigree and lineage from Greece's past very good Eurovision heritage, but in the face of a band who just captured something of the moment and won over both the televote and the judges. That doesn't detract from just how polished this song is and that perhaps should be better known and loved by Eurofandom at large.

Eurovision 2003 - Number 19 - Marian Georgiou - "Can’t Escape – Come Back"

Marian Georgiou has been in the Greek language national final scene for a few years. Alternating between Cyprus and Greece depending which country has been relegated and which has been in the contest. She's not been hugely successful. Her best result came in Cyprus in 2000, when she finished fourth. In Greece, she's never qualified for the final.

Perhaps unwisely, she teamed up with song-writer Konstantinos Tseleste, who was behind her 2002 failure. He came up with Can't Escape - Come Back. Let's start with the staging - I can't remember if this is the first time I've seen bare-chested male dancers. It's certainly the first time I've seen them swinging ropes. Together with Marian's red PVC ensemble and the title, it's a kink-fest.

The song itself is a bop. The sound-quality is lacking, but Marian shimmies seductively at the centre of things while Middle Eastern motifs and drums suggest an stereotypical exoticality. Marian may be lacking some energy, but nevertheless all the suggestive bells and whistles are there and in place.

The audience of Ellinikós Telikós 2003 hosted at Ciné Keramikos Nightclub in Athens seem underwhelmed at the end. The jury and the televote agreed. They placed her 10th and last of the songs competing. There was also an SMS vote this year, but they still only place Marian 9th. Overall, last place.

I'm not sure what was going on here. I don't think it's the sound as that was the same for all the competitors. It could be the over sexiness, it could be the musical hints at Turkishness, it might be Marian's inert presence at the heart of things. Maybe there was something else going on - Marian does seem very keen to leave the stage. Whatever it was that yielded such poor results, it was another flop.

Yet this is exactly the direction that Eurovision was going in. The song is fun, sexy and has huge potential for a bigger stage (and better microphones). I really like it.

Marian herself did have one more go at a national final in Cyprus in 2009, but again without success. What was far more successful was her single Ta Rialia which came out in 2007 and was a big hit in Greece and across Europe more widely. Although it's her only single listed on either Discogs or last.fm, her YouTube channel shows lots of releases all the way up to last year.

1995 Dublin - Number 18 - Elina Constantopoulou - "Ποια προσευχή"

Pia Prosefhi (Which Prayer?) was the final song on the stage in Dublin in 1995. It's a profoundly Greek song with traditional pipes and lyrics speaking of connection to the land and its history. The ethnic qualities were matched the trend of the winner to use more traditional sounds and rhythms. It was an internal selection by ERT in Greece, and was popular inside Greece. Despite being among the favourites on the night, it finished only 12th - perhaps hampered by its place in the running order. Or perhaps they were just settling in the comfortable area of the leaderboard that Greece had regularly achieved for most of the 1990s, like a depression in the cushion of a well-used armchair.

Elina was a relative newcomer to the Greek music scene, but had got one hit to her name. She teamed up with Nikos Terzis, who had backed Kaiti Garbi at Eurovision in 1993 to write Pai Prosefhi. They submitted it and got selected, a pattern which Greece had been following for a number of years.

Elina and Nikos were only just getting started however. Elina entered a song in Ellinikós Telikós 2002, but didn't manage to make the final. She then went to Cyprus to provide backing for their entry in 2005 with Constantinos Christoforou. Nikos had even more later success, writing a number of songs throughout the 2000s including two third place finishers for Greece, as well as working with Belarus.

However, in 1995, Greece are getting stuck in a rut. How much longer will they be content with finishing between 10th and 14th with an internally selected song?