Introduction

It’s the fourth time for San Marino in the Eurovision Song Contest. There has always been an internal selection of the Sammarinese entries by the national broadcaster RTV. And for the second time Valentina Monetta has been chosen! Last year Valentina has made the best result ever for San Marino – the 14th place in the semi final. The Song originally called “The Facebook Song Uh Oh Oh”, which has received a lot of media attention as the title was not conform with the EBU rules so it had to be changed into “The Social Network Song”. San Marino has never made it into the grand final, unfortunately. Maybe this year everything can be changed?

Valentina was born in 1975 in San Marino; her parents come from San Marino and Italy. She graduated from highschool for arts in Rimini, Italy; she has no academic background, but has been singing at an early age in several bands, plays the piano and has a talent for improvisations. Valentine has a passion for Jazz, R&B, Pop and Italian music. She already released her first album where she composed and everything by herself as well as written the lyrics. Her biggest music influences are coming from Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Joni Mitchell, Whitney Houston and Caterina Valente.

Valentina has already tried to enter the ESC in 2008 with the song “Se non Ci Sei Tu”, but Miodio has been chosen as first Sammarinese entry. The song for this year is called “Crisalide (Vola)” and has been composed again by the German composer Ralph Siegel who has composed more than 30 songs for the ESC and the winning entry “Ein Bisschen Frieden” by Nicole in 1982 for Germany. This year “Crisalide” is a completely different song compared to last year’s entry. It a matured song, sung in Italian and has a glance of a great Italian composition, maybe exactly what people expect from a San Marinese contribution. Maybe the team from San Marino has learned from last year’s mistakes and they made a big change from one of the worst songs last year to one of the strongest this year. The only strange thing in this song is the change of the rhythm at the end of the song. Maybe this is made due to the name of the song – a kind of transformation, but this has seldomly worked well at Eurovision.

History

Participations: 4

Debut: 2008

Biggest success: 1x 14th place in the semi final 2012 “The Social Network Song” by Valentina Monetta

This is the fourth time that mini state San Marino takes part in the Eurovision Song Contest. The debut song in 2008 was “Complice” by the group Miodio, which made an undeserved 19th place in the semi final – it was one of the strongest songs in the Belgrade competition, but probably this has been overseen. This entry might have shaped up very well in the final. Last year’s entry “The Social Network Song” sung by Valentina Monetta made a 14th place in the semi final. Unfortunately, the Sammarinese entries never made it into the grand final so far. On the other hand it can be seen as an achievement that such a small country with a little bit over 31.000 inhabitants is taking part in this big event. Just imagine that there are about 15.000 viewers expected in the Crystal Hall in Baku. In recent years also other mini states tried their luck in the ESC like Andorra and Monaco, with a little success only. In the case of a victory a country must make sure that it can host the next contest. It seems that it’s a bit unrealistic that those countries have the infrastructure in regards of an appropriate arena, but that’s another story. If San Marino would win, Bologna in Italy might be a realistic host city.