Jemini
were an English pop group from Liverpool, best known for scoring "nul points" and finishing in last place with their song "Cry Baby" at the 2003 Eurovision Song Contest in Latvia.
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JEMINI TICKETS
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Early career
Chris Cromby and Gemma Abbey (born 1982) met in 1995 at Liverpool's Starlight Stage School and toured Liverpool's pubs and clubs with the academy's kids' roadshow. At 16, after leaving college, they formed Tricity, named after the brand of
electrical appliances. They formed Jemini ("Gem-and-I") at the age of 19. They spent the next two and a half years touring pubs and clubs in the UK performing
Stevie Wonder,
Randy Crawford,
Motown covers and
ABBA medleys, as well as their own compositions. Gemma says she has loved
Eurovision since childhood and count previous Eurovision entrants such as
Sonia,
Precious and
Dana International amongst her favourites.
"Cry Baby"
Jemini and the song "Cry Baby" were selected to take part in Eurovision by a public phone poll in the
BBC's
A Song for Europe
competition. Their performance at Eurovision in
Riga in May 2003 was criticised for being off-key, and later earned the United Kingdom "
nul points".
Failure and break-up
The Eurovision failure prompted a great deal of mirth and consternation in the British
media. Jemini admitted that their performance was off-
key, and claimed they were unable to hear the backing track due to a technical fault. Chris claimed that
Terry Wogan had warned them before the contest that they would not get any points due to the
Iraq War [1]. Author and historian John Kennedy O'Connor notes in
The Eurovision Song Contest - The Official History
that with a record field of 26 entries, this made the UK's failure the most spectacular in the history of the contest.
[2] No song from the Eurovision final has achieved "nul points" since. Due to their failure at Eurovision, they were immediately dropped by their record label (Integral Records UK), and as a consequence of this, their first ever album was never released. This was because they only made the Top 20 for one week with "Cry Baby", falling to #35 on the
UK Singles Chart in its second week. They split up as a duo. In his book
Nul Points
,
Tim Moore meets the duo, finding Abbey working in a car showroom and Cromby working in a clothes shop.
Discography
Unreleased Album
- Love Is Blind
(2003) (Cancelled)
Singles
| Year
| Single
| Chart positions
|
| UK
| IE
|
| 2003
| "Cry Baby"
| 15
| 73
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| "Try To Love"*
| -
| -
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References
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2935874.stm
- O'Connor, John Kennedy. The Eurovision Song Contest - The Official History. Carlton Books, UK. 2007 ISBN 978-1-84442-994-3