Italy

Ahhhh, Italy.  My first Eurovision love (even though you abandoned the Contest you inspired when the going got tough for Western Europe).  I still love you, because yours were the first songs I loved and sang in my made up fauxItalian, until I actually took a year of Italian classes and realized just how ridiculously wrong my lyrics were.  Everything is OK now.  You're back (perhaps after predicting the turn of the Contest to come in the late 1990s and 2000s) and this is your history:

One of the Original Seven, Italy has too often played bridesmaid to many French chansons (from France, Monaco and Luxembourg) and English pop anthems (courtesy of the UK and Ireland) in the Contest.  Italy scored its first Third place finish in the third year of the Contest in Hilversum in 1958 (with Domenico Modugno's Nel Blu, Dipinto di blu, more popularly known as Volare), then got back into bronze position in 1963 in London, before scoring the big first win at the Copenhagen show with a sixteen year-old Gigliola Cinquetti's racy ballad Non ho l'eta ("I'm not old enough").  Gigliola would return to the Eurovision stage twice after her win: Once as performer at the Brighton Contest in 1974 with Si ("Yes") and finishing right below Abba's Waterloo; and the final time as co-host during the festivities in Rome in 1991.  [The Contest had returned to Rome thanks to Toto Cutugno's topical Insieme: 1992 ("Together: 1992) celebrating the imminent establishment of the European Community (now the European Union) at the 1990 Contest in Zagreb.]  Here's Ms. Cinquetti with Si in 1974 (which incidentally was banned in its home country, because the Italian broadcaster thought that the Si could be misinterpreted as a suggested Yes vote in the upcoming national referendum on divorce laws in the country):

Before Italy's second win in 1990, however, was its "big disappointment" in 1987 in Brussels with Umberto Tuzzi and Raf's touching ballad Gente di Mare ("People of the Sea") (clip below), which finished in third place behind Johnny Logan's Hold Me Now and Wind's Lass Die Sonne in dein Herz ("Let the Sunshine in your Heart"), despite coming into the Contest as the favorite.  [I still remember how the faces of the Italian performers sank when the points distribution began, as it became increasingly clear that this was a two way contest between Germany and Ireland, and later turned into a runaway sweep by the latter.]  Italy was shaken and it showed in its next two tries at Eurovision, placing 12th in 1988 and 9th in 1989.  Later, the country reclaimed the winner's trophy in 1990 and hosted in Rome in 1991 (also known as the year of the tie-break fiasco between France and Sweden).

After doing fairly well in the early nineties, the country withdrew from the Contest for three years, citing a lack of public interest in the Contest as the cause.  Italy returned from this short absence in 1997, with Janisse's Fiumi di Parole ("Rivers of Words") finishing a solid fourth.  This finish was apparently not enough to pique the Italian viewers' interest, leading to Italy's absence from 1998 until 2011.  Though several host countries tried to bring Italy back to Eurovision before then, it took Germany's win and iron will to get the only Initial Seven country not participating back into the Contest's fold.  The return came in the form of Raphael Gualazzi's Madness of Love (gasp! A song in English from the country that prided itself in representing Italian at the Contest) in Dusseldorf.  Raphael finished in a triumphant second place, with spokespersons distributing the points basically gushing their love of Italy's return (and some even singing snippets of their favorite Italian songs).  Italy followed up with another Top Ten finish during last year's Contest in Baku with Nina Zilli's L'amore e femmina (Out of Love) and this years returns to the Malmo stage with Marco Mengoni's delicious L'Essenziale.  No word necessary...just watch: