Serbian entry wins Eurovision contest, controversy arises

TIRANA, May.12- Out of the 28 competing songs in the European music contest only 10 could make it to the next stage and the Albanian “hear my plea” from Frederik Ndoci could not make it to the second round. Praised by international commentators as a good performance, Ndoci’s song could not make it in the show of Helsinki.
The Serbian entry Molitva (The Plea), performed by Marija Serifovic, which came through the semi-final stage went on to take the big prize at the final of 2007 Eurovision Song Contest in Helsinki on Saturday night. The powerful ballad collected 268 votes and was consistently at the head of the field. Immediately after the proclamation of the winner, a controversy sparked over a potential theft of the song from the Albanian song ‘Separation’ composed by a Macedonian artist, Maki (Mariano Filipovski) and performed by the well-known Albanian singer Soni Malaj during the festival Top-Fest 3 and even won a prize. The composer has claimed that much of the music is the same and the singer also confirmed that the chorus part sounded to her very similar. Music experts have expressed different opinion about the song while many European tabloids like The Sun have published the news on their headlines. The organizing part, the European Broadcasting Union is yet to issue an official reaction to the news and if the claim is confirmed it has to annul the first prize as all participating songs have to be authentic. The controversy over the two songs has raised worldwide curiosity as more than 90.000 users have accessed different video transmitting websites in order to check the sound similarity between the two.
Belgrade will host the show in 2008.