Over the last few weeks, we’ve taken a look back at the rankings of the live performances of the Eurovision Song Contest grand finals between 2004 and 2008, and this week, we continue with the 2009 contest, to see which live performances have been the most popular with viewers over the years.
Before we begin, these view counts were taken only from the official Eurovision YouTube channel’s live performances from the grand final. We also have the performances final placing at Eurovision in brackets.
All views were accurate as of July 26, 2021 (Australian time).
Norway – Alexander Rybak – ‘Fairytale’ – 32,664,776 views (1st place at Eurovision 2009)
Azerbaijan – AySel and Arash – ‘Always’ – 16,810,207 views (3rd place)
Turkey – Hadise – ‘Düm Tek Tek’ – 10,457,182 views (4th place)
Greece – Sakis Rouvas – ‘This Is Our Night’ – 2,927,832 views (7th place)
Armenia – Inga and Anush – ‘Jan Jan’ – 1,571,673 views (10th place)
Ukraine – Svetlana Loboda – ‘Be My Valentine’ – 1,474,009 views (12th place)
Iceland – Yohanna – ‘Is It True?’ – 1,215,280 views (2nd place)
Sweden – Malena Ernman – ‘La voix’ – 1,168,717 views (21st place)
Albania – Kejsi Tola – ‘Carry Me in Your Dreams’ – 802,420 views (17th place)
Estonia – Urban Symphony – ‘Rändajad’ – 741,748 views (6th place)
Spain – Soraya Arnelas – ‘La noche es para mí’ – 651,324 views (24th place)
Germany – Alex Swings Oscar Sings! – ‘Miss Kiss Kiss Bang’ – 536,048 views (20th place)
France – Patricia Kaas – ‘Et s’il fallait le faire’ – 515,970 views (8th place)
Romania – Elena – ‘The Balkan Girls’ – 481,883 views (19th place)
Moldova – Nelly Ciobanu – ‘Hora din Moldova’ – 432,984 views (14th place)
Bosnia and Herzegovina – Regina – ‘Bistra voda’ – 419,694 views (9th place)
Russia – Anastasiya Prikhodko – ‘Mamo’ – 358,143 views (11th place)
Portugal – Flor-de-Lis – ‘Todas as ruas do amor’ – 355,306 views (15th place)
Croatia – Igor Cukrov featuring Andrea – ‘Lijepa Tena’ – 275,391 views (18th place)
Finland – Waldo’s People – ‘Lose Control’ – 229,344 views (25th place)
Israel – Noa and Mira Awad – ‘There Must Be Another Way’ – 184,037 views (16th place)
Lithuania – Sasha Son – ‘Love’ – 172,985 views (23rd place)
Malta – Chiara – ‘What If We’ – 152,012 views (22nd place)
United Kingdom – Jade Ewen – ‘It’s My Time’ – 106,526 views (5th place)
Denmark – Niels Brinck – ‘Believe Again’ – 100,635 views (13th place)
As we can see, the most viewed live performance from the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 was also the winner of the contest when it came to the points received on the night, while the third and fourth placing entries of the night also made the top three.
The biggest risers, when compared to their placing at Eurovision, was Sweden’s Malena Ernman with ‘La voix’, who rose thirteen places from twenty-first to eighth, and Spain’s Soraya Arnelas with ‘La noche es para mi’, who also rose thirteen places from twenty-fourth to eleventh.
Meanwhile, the biggest descender was the United Kingdom’s entry Jade Ewen with ‘It’s My Time’, which dropped nineteen places from fifth to twenty-fourth. The performance uploaded to the BBC YouTube channel has more than a million views, but only views from the official Eurovision YouTube channel were counted.
Of the six grand finals that we’ve now looked at, the 2009 contest is amongst the favourites when it comes to view count, reaching almost 75 million views (as did the 2006 contest). The six contests combined have live performances with more than 325 million views in total, with the most viewed live performance of these contests (Lordi’s ‘Hard Rock Hallelujah’) accounting for more than 13% of those views.
Next week, we will make our way into a new decade and take a look at the live performance view counts on YouTube for the Eurovision 2010 competitors.