Dziesma par laimi

"Dziesma par laimi" ("A song about happiness") was the Latvian entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 2004, performed in Latvian by Fomins & Kleins.

"Dziesma par laimi"
Eurovision Song Contest 2004 entry
Country	Latvia
Artist(s)	Ivo Fomins, Tomass Kleins
As	Fomins & Kleins
Language	Latvian
Composer(s)	Tomass Kleins
Lyricist(s)	Guntars Račs
Finals performance
Semi-final result	17th
Semi-final points	23
Entry chronology
◄ "Hello From Mars" (2003)
"The War Is Not Over" (2005) ►

The song is a rock-influenced track, with the singer telling his lover that "when there is nothing else, I think that I still have a song I can sing to you" and explaining that the song in question is one about happiness in the world. He sings that this is the kind of happiness which comes unexpectedly, "and takes us by the hand".

In the semifinal, the song was performed fourth, following Switzerland's Piero Esteriore & The MusicStars with "Celebrate" and preceding Israel's David D'Or with "Leha'amin". At the close of voting, it had received 23 points, 17th in a field of 22, and missing out on the top-ten cutoff to qualify for the final. As a result, Latvia's next contest appearance would also be in the semi-final.

The song has been recorded in a number of other languages. The duo is credited with recordings in Lithuanian, Estonian, Ukrainian, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Finnish and English, as well as a Latvian-Belarusian bilingual version. All versions, except the English one, were made available for free download in MP3 format in both high and low quality, from the Fomins and Kleins website. This website is no longer in service. The website was mainly in Latvian, with just one page in English which was just a sentence telling visitors that they could download the song in all the different languages. It is not quite clear as to why the English version was not included. It did, however appear on a few rare one track promo CDs.

In 2014, a new version was recorded in Latvian.[1]

To date "Dziesma par laimi" is the only Latvian Eurovision entry sung in Latvian: although the 2009 Latvian national preliminary round was won by "Sastrēgums" sung in Latvian by Intars Busulis, that number was rendered in Russian as "Probka" when Busulis performed it at the second semi-final for Eurovision 2009 (Moscow was the host city for Eurovision 2009). Debuting at the 2000 Contest has enabled Latvia to avail itself of the "free language rule", as well as the prevailing wisdom that English-language songs place higher than those in other languages, and besides "Dziesma par laimi" and "Probka" only one Latvian Eurovision entry has not been sung in English: the 2007 entry "Questa Notte" sung in Italian by Bonaparti.lv.

It was succeeded as Latvian representative at the 2005 Contest by Walters & Kazha with "The War Is Not Over".

References

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuIfZj4bIxs

• Diggiloo Thrush. "2004 Latvia (English)". Retrieved 2006-10-02.