The 46th Eurovision Song Contest was held on May 12, 2001 in the Parken Stadium in Copenhagen, Denmark. The presenters were Natasja Crone Back and Søren Pilmark. The contest was won by Tanel Padar, Dave Benton & 2XL who were representing Estonia with the song Everybody. Dave Benton, from Aruba, is the only black person to have ever won the Eurovision Song Contest.

The Danish national broadcaster faced some problems whilst organizing the contest such as the lack of funds and the search for a suitable venue. The event was eventually located in the soccer stadium Parken, which was the biggest ever to host a Eurovision Song Contest. It held 38,000 people, and most of them could not see the stage. For many entries, the hall appeared to be too big.

All of the countries participating in this year’s Eurovision had to use tele-voting as it became compulsory from then on. The jury backup votes were only used for some countries because of either technical problems with their televotes or a weak fixed-telephone infrastructure. There was also a rule change concerning the qualification of countries from 2002. Along with the ‘Big 4’, the top 15 placed countries this year would qualify for next years competition. The other spots for 2002 would be filled by countries that were excluded from the 2001 contest because of their low point average for the years 1996-2000.

Big favourites in this contest were France, Greece and Slovenia. Also the latino singers from Malta and Spain were expected to do very well. The Swedish song ran into controversy, as it sounded very much like the 1996 Belgian entry Liefde is een kaartspel. When the voting came though it was a two-horse race, with only Estonia and Denmark in contention. Estonia ended up to be the unexpected winners.

See you in Tallinn for the 47th Eurovision Song Contest in 2002