Last night was the grand final of the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest and an impressive victory for Italy's Måneskin with a total score of 524 points for their song 'Zitti e Buoni'.
I'd like to think I'm at least partly, if not solely responsible for this stunning win, after recently celebrating the seventh anniversary of one of my most successful tweets of all time.
Back in 2014, Eurovision was held a few weeks earlier in the year, with the final taking place on May 10th. In the good old days, the subtitles showed foreign-language lyrics translated into English, whereas nowadays they tend to display them in their original language.
That gave us the gem of a lyric "I love parking inattentively" in the 2014 Italy Eurovision entry 'La Mia Città' by Emma Marrone.
I thought it was a pretty great line, so I took a quick, semi-blurry snapshot of my TV screen and tweeted it with the words "BEST LYRIC OF THE NIGHT", a couple of Eurovision-related hashtags, and CC'd the Twitter account @yplac which celebrates inattentive parking.
BEST LYRIC OF THE NIGHT #Eurovision #Italy cc @yplac pic.twitter.com/JIy3J3UTOS
— Bobble Bardsley (@bobblebardsley) May 10, 2014
Apparently other people also enjoyed the lyric, as to date by May 2021 it has received a total of:
- Over 1,500 retweets
- Nearly 900 likes
- 40 replies
Unfortunately I don't think full analytics were available at that time, so I don't know exactly how many impressions and interactions it's had, but it must be in the tens of thousands at the very least.
It's also featured in several BuzzFeed articles by Scott Bryan which I'm sure have helped it to remain 'current' despite its ever-increasing age over the past seven years. Thanks Scott!
Recreating a Classic
I've always been very happy with how well that tweet performed, so this year I decided it was about time to fix the blurry image with a digital remaster.
The result was this:
 |
| My 2021 digitally remastered version of "I love parking inattentively", Italy Eurovision 2014. |
It turned out pretty great. Some of the background is still a little fuzzy but I think that's just the way it looked when broadcast.
I tweeted this image as a reply to my original from seven years ago, and with identical text, plus a short explanation of why I had decided to update it.
To date the HD version has had:
- 12,000 impressions
- 1,000 engagements
- 650+ clicks on the image
So I'd like to take the credit for putting Italy's Eurovision legacy in the collective subconscious ahead of this year's final, as I'm sure it was the deciding factor in helping Måneskin to a clear 25-point victory over second-place France. You're welcome, Måneskin!
