Hungary

The first Hungarian entry to grace the Eurovision competition stage was Friderika Bayer in the 1994 Dublin Contest with Kinek mondjam el vetkeimet ("To whom can I tell my sins?").  During the very close voting, the song finished with a total of 122 points and placing 4th out of 25 participants, including three consecutive douze points (from Sweden, Finland and Ireland), and initially setting up  Hungary as the leader (followed closely by Poland).  Hungary's first douze points went to Germany that year, and gave us a glimpse of things to come (i.e. domination of the Contest moving to Central and Eastern European countries, with which Hungary ironically has very little to do these days).  Here's the Hungarian song that started it all:

After such an impressive debut, Hungary's fortunes quickly declined in the next three Contests, putting them in 22nd, 12th and 23rd places (1995, 1997 and 1998 respectively).  With money lacking for the country's public broadcasting agencies and the consecutive disappointments at Eurovision, Hungary left the contest indefinitely, returning in 2005 with NOX's rendition of Forogj, vilag on the Kiev stage.  Though the country's 2007 entry in Helsinki (a jazzy rendition titled Unsubstantial Blues by Magdi Ruzsa) put Hungary back in the Top Ten, its last four entries have either been finding themselves stuuck in the Semi Finals or barely eking into the Final and placing in the bottom of the score board.

After the 24th place finish last year in Baku, Hungary returns to the Contest with indie-pop singer ByeAlex (aka Alex Marta) with a new version Kedvesem, the song with which he won the Hungarian national selection.  [The winning version was 21 seconds longer than the allowed under Eurovision Contest rules, forcing the artist to create a new remix version specifically for the show(s) in Malmo.]  The song is slow, the  voices are mellow and the singers all have that certain indie Silverlake vibe (Angelenos, you know what I'm talking about), and it's the type of song that's, let's say, uncommon among this year's melange of hard rock, Skrillex wanna-be electronica, and the wave of techno comeback.