Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest 1984
| Eurovision Song Contest 1984 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country |
 Italy | |||
| National selection | ||||
| Selection process | Internal Selection | |||
| Selected entrant | Alice & Franco Battiato | |||
| Selected song | "I treni di Tozeur" | |||
| Finals performance | ||||
| Final result | 5th=, 70 points | |||
| Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest | ||||
| ||||
Italy was represented by Alice and Franco Battiato, with the song '"I treni di Tozeur", at the 1984 Eurovision Song Contest, which took place on 5 May in Luxembourg City. The song was chosen internally by Italian broadcaster RAI.
At Eurovision
On the night of the final Alice and Battiato performed 18th in the running order, following Switzerland and preceding Portugal. At the close of voting "I treni di Tozeur" had picked up 70 points, placing Italy joint 5th (with Belgium) of the 19 entries. The song had received maximum 12s from Finland and Spain, but nine of the national juries had failed to vote for it at all. The Italian jury awarded its 12 points to Ireland.[1]
"I treni di Tozeur" is one of the most highly regarded songs in Eurovision history and usually features prominently in polls of the best Eurovision songs of all time. The fact that it failed to challenge for victory in what is widely considered one of the weakest contests of all is often mentioned as one of Eurovision's biggest mysteries – however, it has also been said that the song's very sophistication, elliptical lyrics and unusually complex structure (it does not have a definable chorus) could have worked against it at a time when Eurovision juries were still voting heavily in favour of either traditional big ballads or frothy Euro-pop, and there are also several other examples from the 1980s of songs, now very well thought of, which failed conspicuously at Eurovision through being too avant-garde at the time to find favour with old-style juries.