"You HAVE to listen to this one."
Out of the light like a star, like a hero! 12points.tv interviews the gracious Charlotte Perrelli as she prepares for Melodifestivalen on Saturday.
Many of the artists performing at Saturday's Melodifestivalen heat arrived in Malmö today, getting ready for rehearsals and performances in the coming days at the city's relatively new Arena. Charlotte Perrelli, who won ESC 1999 and competed again at ESC 2008, took some time with us to talk about the twists and turns of her performing career, Eurovision wins and losses, and her expectations for her new song, "The Girl". There are some interesting revelations below that we bet even her fans didn't know about.
Not half as commercial as Kalomira, not half as rocky as last year's entry. We present Turkey. Can Bonomo's song revealed today: Oriental sounds, do we hear some Klezmer even.....
Judge for yourselves, here it is, Love me back!
Charlotte, Danny, Christer and Lotta. A very exciting Melodifestivalen semi-final approaches.
Tonight, 12points.tv was in attendance at a press conference held by SVT in a posh Malmö hotel. All 8 songs for Saturday's Melodifestivalen were played in their entirety for a room full of journalists. It was like a set up out of a science fiction movie - 3 rows of tables filled with people all staring at a giant portable stereo placed on a table on stage. But everyone was there for the same thing - to get a preview of this weekend's contestants. The songs for the most part did not disappoint.
Usually my own schlager/ESC opinion differs from how Swedes like their songs, so I had a look around the room to see what the journalist's reactions were, so you can get a varied opinion. The strongest songs came from Charlotte Perrelli, Christer Sjögren and Lotta Engmark, and Danny Saucedo, but most songs are at least intriguin. Here are our thoughts.
OA | Racist comments in Ukraine
++ Line up Spain complete ++ Amnesty International critical about Azerbaijan ++ Talking to Charlotte tonight! ++ ..
There is the general prejudice that non-white artists don't get too many votes from eastern European countries. Recent examples are Norway's entry last year and the Netherlands in 2007. This year Ukraine almost seems to have made a statement against this prejudice, selecting Gaitana to represent the country in Baku. Gaitana is partly Congolese but she was born and raised in Ukraine. Apparently this now hasn't turned out to be accepted generally in the country anyway. In Ukrainian press Yuriy Syrotyuk, of the Svoboda party, said that "Gaitana is not an organic representative of the Ukrainian culture." "Eurovision is our chance to promote Ukraine," "We need to show our originality," he told Kyiv Post on Feb. 21. Such a pity!
Charlotte Perrelli is back in Melodifestivalen this year, performing her song The Girl. Now a dramatic thing happened - the song leaked on the net already.
SVT is normally very strict on keeping the songs very well hidden untill just a couple of days before the semifinals. The only options they now seem to be having is either release all 1 minute snippets or disqualify la Perrelli as well as Why Start A Fire by Lisa Miskovsky that also got out in the open already. Disqualifying would be a pity, but listen to it below and judge for yourselves. The Girl is written by Fredrik Kempe, who is responsible for three winning songs in Sweden, including Hero and last year's Popular.
One and a half week earlier than expected the Israeli entry for this year's Eurovision already is out.... The song Time was selected internally and wasn't due to be released before the beginning of March. But now you cal already hear it on youtube (see below). The song is mostly in English with some phrases in Hebrew.
OA | Going up, up, up....
++ Euphoria disqualified?? ++ Dutch battles announced ++ No enthusiam for the Georgian and Montenegrin entries here ++ ..
Before the song Euphoria by Loreen actually is allowed to be released it already seems to be on its way to become an international hit. Euphoria, one of the qualifiers in the first heat of Melodifestivalen this year is a favorit among fans. Untill the day of the Swedish national final the song amy not be published, but somehow it already slipped out and now even made its way into a trailer of a Spanish TV series, reports Eurovision fansite Escdaily. Although this is against the contest rules, Loreen is not likely to be disqualified. Warner Music and SVT are trying hard to get the transmission of the trailer stopped (watch it below).
The Georgian candidate for Baku is Anri Jokhadze. He won the national final this afternoon with I'm a Joker. A total of nine acts participated in Georgia, the rest of the results was not published.
Estonia begins its selection process and sends five songs to their final...
After Estonia's unfortunate 24th placing at ESC 2011 with Getter Jaani's "Rockefeller Street", Estonia is fired up to send a big song to the 2012 contest. Last night, the country held its annual Eesti Laul selection competition and sent five songs to the final. They included:
- Pop Maniacs - "I Don't Know"
- Ott Lepland - "Kuula"
- August Hunt - "Tantsulõvi"
- Liis Lemsalu - "Made Up My Mind"
- Loss Paranoias - "Valedetektor"
