Baku to host next year's Eurovision songfest

PanARMENIAN.Net - Azerbaijan has won this year's Eurovision Song Contest in Germany, which means next year's songfest will be hosted in Baku.

ldar Gasimov and Nigar Jamal of Ell/Nikki were voted winners, after scoring 221 points with their love song, Running Scared.

Italy's Raphael Gualazzi took second place, followed by Eric Saade from Sweden. Newly reformed band Blue notched up 100 points, whilst Ireland's entry, X Factor twins Jedward, finished eighth.

Viewers at home in all 43 competing nations voted for their favourite song by phone or text message, which accounted for half of each country's vote. The other 50% was determined by five-member expert juries in each participating country.

Two rounds of semi-finals held earlier in the week whittled the competitors down to 25 finalists. The event attracted 35,000 to the Fortuna Dusseldorf Arena, BBC reported.

Armenia's Emmy was knocked out of Eurovision Song Contest 2011 in the May 10 seminal, although her performance of Boom Boom song was met warmly by the audience at Arena stadium in Düsseldorf, Germany.

According to earlier reports, some fans of Eurovision 2011 in Armenia disagreed with the selection of song Boom-Boom performed by Armenian singer Emmy at the song contest. As they noted, the selection was illogical. According to the results of SMS voting posted on the web, the song AYO was the one to be given priority.