Cyprus was represented at the Eurovision Song Contest 1984 with the song "Anna Mari-Elena" (Άννα Μαρί-Έλενα), written and performed by Andy Paul. The Cypriot participating broadcaster, the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC), selected its entry through a national final.
Before Eurovision
National final
Competing entries
The Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) opened a submission period for Cypriot artists and composers to submit songs until 28 January 1984.[1] Forty submissions were received, of which three were revealed to be invalid during the initial presentation of the songs.[2][3] Two of the invalid submissions were theatrical works, and the other had plagiarised lyrics.[3]
Format
The national final was held on 26 February 1984 at the Filoxenia Hotel in Nicosia and was hosted by Pavlos Pavlou.[4] The results were decided by a 154-member jury consisting of 46 professionals from the press and other organisations, and 108 members of the public.[3][5] Members of the public who wished to participate in the jury had to be Cypriot nationals over the age of 16, and had between 12 February and 16 February 1984 to apply.[5] Over a thousand people applied to become a jury member and the 108 jury members were drawn at random on 20 February 1984 at the CyBC buildings.[2]
The competition was done in four stages and lasted the entire day, from around 10:00 EET until 22:00 EET.[2][3] In the first stage, the submitted recordings of all forty songs were presented twice and each jury member chose their ten favourite songs, after which the votes were collected and the ten songs with the highest number of votes progressed to the second stage. The ten songs were presented again and were then whittled down to four songs, and from those four songs, two were chosen. The winner was chosen out of the final two songs, where each jury gave one vote to their favourite song, and the runner-up was kept as a back-up entry in the case the winning song could not go to the Eurovision Song Contest.[2] The last part of the competition, with the final four songs, was broadcast on TV and radio live.[2][6]
On the night of the final Paul performed seventh in the running order, following United Kingdom and preceding Belgium.[10] At the close of voting "Anna Maria Lena" had received 31 points, placing Cyprus 15th of the 19 entries. The Cypriot jury awarded its 12 points to Sweden.[11]
