2004 was an odd year. It was the first year that the semi finals happened, so there was an overlap of the old and new rules - The semis as we have them now weren't introduced until 2008.

Prior to the semi final introduction, countries qualified based on their average score over the last five years. This average score qualification was used between 1997 and 2001, and the five countries with the lowest average score over the last five years, weren't allowed to compete in the next year. This brought arguments as a country could have improved over the years and their average might not represent the quality of the song that they wanted to submit.

In Istanbul, 2004, 10 countries automatically qualified from the previous year, not including the "big 4" - those were the top 10 countries from 2003. Another 10 were chosen from the semi final which was held on Wednesday 12th May 2004. This left 12 countries who didn't pass the semis.

The unluckly 12 this year were: Finland, Belarus, Switzerland, Latvia, Israel, Andorra, Portugal, Monaco, Lithuania, Slovenia, Estonia, and Denmark. After watching clips from the videos of their entries, I can see why they didn't make it through. However, I am going to try and pick someone from each year. So, in my opinion the best of the bunch this time was Tomas Thordarson from Denmark with the song Shame On You. It's a catchy song, and he seemed to have a lot of fun with his song.

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