Country Italy Language Italian Lyricist(s) Nicola Salerno | Artist(s) Gigliola Cinquetti Composer(s) Mario Panzeri Conductor Gianfranco Monaldi | |
"Non ho l'età" ([non ˈɔ lleˈta]; Italian for "I'm not old enough") was the winning song in the Eurovision Song Contest 1964, held in Copenhagen. It was performed in Italian by Gigliola Cinquetti representing Italy. Like all previous Italian Eurovision entries, the song had also won that year's Sanremo Music Festival. Cinquetti was sixteen years old at the time, making her the second youngest Eurovision winner in history after Belgium's Sandra Kim who claimed she was fifteen when she won the contest with "J'aime la vie" in Bergen in 1986 - although it was later revealed that Kim, in fact, was only thirteen.
The song was performed twelfth on the night, following Portugal's António Calvário with "Oração" and preceding Yugoslavia's Sabahudin Kurt with "Život je sklopio krug". By the close of voting, it had received 49 points, placing it first in a field of 16.
"Non ho l'età" became a considerable commercial success for Cinquetti, both in Italy, the rest of Continental Europe, Scandinavia and throughout the world; she also recorded the song in English ("This is My Prayer"), Spanish ("No Tengo Edad"), French ("Je suis à toi"), German ("Luna nel blu") and Japanese ("Yumemiru Omoi") and the song has since also been covered by a wide range of artists in other languages. Lili Ivanova, a famous Bulgarian singer and also Hong Kong singress Rebecca Pan, covered the song in 1964.
The song was succeeded as Contest winner in 1965 by France Gall singing "Poupée de cire, poupée de son" for Luxembourg.
It was succeeded as Italian representative at the 1965 Contest by Bobby Solo with "Se piangi, se ridi".
Cinquetti returned to Eurovision in 1974, when she finished second with "Sì" after ABBA's "Waterloo" and in 1991 she co-hosted the contest with Toto Cutugno when it was held in Rome. Cinquetti was to prove not to be a UK 'one-hit- wonder' when an English recording of her 1974 Eurovision entry (titled "Go") reached #8 in the UK chart.