Croatia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2001

Competing entries

On 16 November 2000, HRT opened a submission period where artists and composers were able to submit their entries to the broadcaster with the deadline on 17 December 2000. Artists were required to be signed to record companies or have had at least one commercial release in order to participate in the competition.^[3][4] An additional seven composers were also invited by HRT to submit songs following consultation with the Croatian Composers' Society (HDS) and Croatian Musicians Union (HDS): Tonči Huljić, Rajko Dujmić, Miro Buljan, Zrinko Tutić, Nenad Ninčević, Zdenko Runjić and Đorđe Novković. 170 entries were received by the broadcaster during the submission period. A nine-member expert committee consisting of Pero Gotovac, Nikica Kalogjera, Stjepan Mihaljinec, Matija Dedić, Siniša Doronjga, Husein Hasanefendić, Stjepan Fučkar, Aleksandar Kostadinov and Velimir Đuretić reviewed the received submissions and selected twenty artists and songs for the competition.^[3] HRT announced the competing entries on 15 January 2001 and among the artists were Tereza Kesovija who represented Monaco in 1966 and Yugoslavia in 1972, Novi fosili who represented Yugoslavia in 1987, Vladimir Kočiš Zec of Novi fosili, Putokazi which represented Croatia in 1993 as Put, and Tony Cetinski who represented Croatia in 1994.^[5]

Prior to the competition, "Ne bih te mogla voljeti više", written by Enes Tvrtković and to have been performed by Ivana Banfić, was withdrawn due to disagreements with the language of the song to be performed and replaced with "Za tebe stvorena" performed by Vesna Pisarović.^[6] On 2 February 2001, Emilija Kokić who won Eurovision for Yugoslavia in 1989 as a member of Riva replaced Minea as the co-performer of the song "Ljepota". The running order of the final was determined during a draw on 30 January 2001.^[7]

Final

The final took place on 4 March 2001. Twelve of the twenty competing songs were performed with HRT's Revijski Orchestra with its own conductors and the winner, "Strune ljubavi" performed by Vanna, was determined by a combination of votes from four regional juries, an expert jury, a public televote divided into four telephone regions in Croatia and a public online vote.^[8][9] A total of 246,836 votes were registered by the public: 242,491 votes through televoting and 3,895 votes through online voting. The writers of the winning song also received a monetary award of 100,000 kuna. In addition to the performances of the competing entries, the Zagreb Dance Ensemble, Bojana Gregorić and Goran Karan, who represented Croatia in 2000, performed as the interval acts during the show.^{[citation needed]}