Austria

Day 2: Another eight rehearsals

The second day of rehearsals: For now, there seems to be no solution in sight regarding the kinetic sun on stage. Meanwhile, the second group of semifinalists made their appearance for rehearsals. We still get little information. We do not know how the participants sing. What we get is mainly the picture. What you can do best, is read this article and follow Kal’s Italian journey on Youtube, Instagram and TikTok PORTUGAL: “Saudade” is one such word that occurs in only one language. It’s what MARO sings about. MARO is on the back podium, close to the green room. She and her backing vocals form a circle, MARO in purple in the spotlight. The graphics are kept simple: some indefinable figures in different colors. Before we forget: the smoke machine is working. CROATIA: Is Croatia your guilty pleasure this year by any chance? Mia is wearing a pink-red dress, with at least one leg clearly visible. The three dancers are wearing less bright colors. They tell a story with their movements. DENMARK: The Reddi girls wear orange, green, red and checkered purple suits. They all have an instrument in their hands that makes you wonder if they can play it at all. Retro 70s, that’s what we see. The graphics consist of checkered neon colors. AUSTRIA: LUM!X and Pia Maria stand in a kind of illuminated circle, in which we see the colors of the Austrian flag. There is a lot of movement and dancing on the stage. Bright lights and pyrotechnics are not lacking in this act either. ICELAND: “Með Hækkandi Sól” is the name of Systur’s song. The ladies are dressed in retro 70s outfits. One of the three is wearing an imposing hat. The graphics consist of glitter. According to Eurovision.tv, that gives the whole thing something magical. The show seems to end in bright orange light. GREECE: Amanda wears a long silver-white dress. She is alone on stage. Around her, in blue light, chairs stand and lie in a circle. Eurovision.tv reports an echo on the vocal, but what they exactly mean by that is not clear. NORWAY: For those who have been following Subwoolfer for a while, the Norwegian performance will contain few surprises. Keith and Jim, who we still don’t know who they really are, wear their yellow wolf heads. They are assisted by three dancers, also completely wrapped in yellow. All wear sunglasses. Behind them DJ Astronaut is standing on a platform, he is completely dressed in gold. ARMENIA: Rosa Linn from Armenia performs in a special setting: a complete bedroom! The furniture and walls seem to be made entirely of scrap paper. Rosa Linn sits in the midst of it all with her guitar, playing her song.

This is the running order

Today, the running order for the two semifinals in the Eurovision Song Contest has been announced. The running order for the final is not known yet, apart from Italy: Mahmood and Blanco will perform in 9th place. 1st semifinal: Albania Latvia Lithuania Switzerland Slovenia Ukraine Bulgaria The Netherlands Moldova Portugal Croatia Denmark Austria Iceland Greece Norway Armenia 2nd semifinal: Finland Israel Serbia Azerbaijan Georgia Malta San Marino Australia Cyprus Ireland North Macedonia Estonia Romania Poland Montenegro Belgium Sweden Czech Republic

LUM!X and Pia Maria represent Austria

photo credits: ORF This morning, Austrian broadcaster ORF announced their contestants. Austria will send LUM!X and Pia Maria to Turin. LUM!X is an Austrian DJ and producer of international fame. Although Luca Michlmayr, which is his real name, is only 19 years old, he worked together with big names as Robin Schulz, Lucas & Steve and R3HAB. In Turin, LUM!X will be joined by a newcomer: singer/songwriter Pia Maria, who is from Tyrol. The song they will present is called “Halo”. The track is not ready for presentation yet. Austrian television did not yet announce when it will be presented. Austria will perform in the second half of the first semifinal. “Thunder” was an international chart succes for LUM!X, featuring Gabry Ponte:

Allocation draw: these are the semifinals

From the Madama Palace in Turin, the allocation draw took place this afternoon. The draw was hosted by Carolina Di Domenico and Gabriele Corsi. During the ceremony, mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb (Rotterdam) handed over the key of the Eurovision City to his Turinese colleague Stefano Lo Russo. The semifinals will be as follows: 1st semifinal, 1st half: Albania Latvia Switzerland Slovenia Bulgaria Moldova Ukraine Lithuania The Netherlands 1st semifinal, 2nd half: Norway Russia Portugal Denmark Armenia Austria Croatia Iceland Greece The countries that will not attend a semifinal but will vote in the 1st one are: France and Italy. 2nd semifinal, 1st half: Australia Georgia Cyprus Serbia Finland Azerbaijan San Marino Israel Malta 2nd semifinal, 2nd half: Montenegro Romania Czech Republic Poland Belgium North Macedonia Sweden Estonia Ireland The countries that will not attend a semifinal but will vote in the 2nd one are: United Kingdom, Spain and Germany.

Carmela Corren passed away

Today we’ve received the sad news that Israeli singer Carmela Corren passed away. Corren, whose real name was Carmela Bizman, was born in Tel Aviv in 1938. In the sixties she built up a career in the German speaking countries. In 1962 she took part in the German national final for the Eurovision Song Contest. “Eine Rose aus Santa Monica” only received one vote, but became a huge hit in the charts afterwards. A year later, Austrian broadcaster ORF invited her to represent Austria in the Eurovision Song Contest. She did, with the song “Vielleicht geschieht ein Wunder”. The song reached the 7th place in the contest in London. Carmela Corren remained popular in the German speaking countries in the early 1960s. She also played in a lot of German movies. However, her career faded after that time. She made several albums in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, also one in Hebrew. Carmela Corren lived in Florida, USA. She withdrew from showbusiness, but every now and then she performed at Jewish folk festivals. Corren was 83 years old.

Blast from the past: Austria 2018

We know a lot about Eurovision; this is knowledge we want to share with you. Therefore we’d like to bring you a blast from the past. Back to 2018, the Austrian entry, Cesár Sampson with “Nobody but you”. Austria in the Eurovision Song Contest Austria is a country with a long history of bad placings in the contest. After the victory in 1966 with Udo Jürgens, it took ages before Conchita Wurst took the prize back home in 2014. However, since then Austria reached the final every time. Austria was back in the picture as a successfull country. Reason enough for the Austrians to look for another entry that would do it. National selection Conchita Wurst was chosen by ORF (Österreichischer RundFunk) internally to represent the country. After two national finals, Nathan Trent (the 2017 contestant) was selected internally again. ORF decided to do it this way again. Anyone could submit songs, but ORF also invited artists to submit songs themselves. On december 5th, 2017, there was news: it was Cesár Sampson who got the ticket to the contest in Lisbon. Songwriting team Symphonix International (Borislav Milanov, Sebastian Arman, Joacim Persson and Johan Alkenäs) wrote a song for him. “Nobody but you” was presented on March 9th. Cesár Sampson Cesár Sampson is an Austrian singer, songwriter, producer, dancer and model. He was born in Linz. His mother Kathy Sampson sang “A Good Friend” in the 1990s, the theme song of the well-known crime series Kommissar Rex. He is the nephew of the singer Helen “Pepsi” DeMacque-Crockett of the duo Pepsi & Shirlie. As a child, he was in front of the camera in a music video by La Toya Jackson.Sampson worked as a social worker for years. He has also worked in the music business as a producer for many years, including with the Symphonix International producer collective. As a backing vocal, Sampson was on stage at the Eurovision Song Contest twice in a row, in 2016 and 2017, representing Bulgaria. “Nobody but you” As mentioned, the Austrian entry was written and composed by the Symphonix International songwriters team ánd by Cesár Sampson himself. It was a song with a gospel sound. The full lyrics of the song “Nobody but you” can be found here. Although the song was not the favorite to win the contest, Austria seemed to have a sure qualifier and probably even a high scoring entry. Results Although the expectations were high, the jury vote brought a complete surprise: the expert jury chose Cesár Sampson and Austria as there winner, with no less than 9 countries awarding the song with ‘douze points’. But with the televoters only awarding it 71 points and a 13th place, the chances to win disappeared quite quickly for Austria. In the end, Sampson reached a 3rd place.

41 countries in 2022 Eurovision Song Contest

41 countries will take part in the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest in Turin. That is what EBU announced today. In comparison with the 2021 contest, Armenia and Montenegro return. The full list is here: Albania Australia Armenia Austria Azerbaijan Belgium Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Georgia Germany Greece Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Latvia Lithuania Malta Moldova Montenegro North Macedonia Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia San Marino Serbia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland The Netherlands Ukraine United Kingdom France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom will directly be placed in the final, to be held on may 14. The other countries will have to qualify through a semifinal on may 10 or 12. As one of the ‘big five’ was this year’s winner, there will only be 25 countries in the final.

Blast from the past: France 1995

We know a lot about Eurovision; this is knowledge we want to share with you. Therefore we’d like to bring you a blast from the past. This time we’re going back to 1995, to the French entry of that year. France in the Eurovision Song Contest In 1987, France had a national final for the last time. It was not quite a success, so French TV decided to quit national finals. It appeared to be a good choice, with lots of successes. Joelle Ursull (1990) and Amina (1991) even came second. Reason enough to do an internal selection again. Nathalie Santamaria The French singer, Nathalie Santamaria, was born in Ajaccio, Corsica in 1973. She studied musicology (piano) at the conservatory of Nice. However, Santamaria was not a wellknown or experienced singer when she was chosen to represent France, back in 1995. Dutch commenter Paul de Leeuw resumed it like this: “It’s as if they said to her: ‘guess what you are doing within two weeks’. ‘Working at the supermarket’, she replied. ‘No, they answered, you are at Eurovision’!”The single “Il me donne rendez-vous” was Nathalie’s first record. In 1997, she released an album: “Entre rêve & realités”. The album contained twelve songs. The entire album can be found on YouTube. After this album, it remained silent around Nathalie. The song “Il me donne rendez-vous” (He sets a date with me) was written by Didier Barbelivien and composed by François Bernheim. You can find the lyrics here. Barbelivien wrote the lyrics of the Monegask and French entries in 1978, and the Monegask one in 1979. The results In none of the polls nor at the bookmakers’ France was one of the favourites. However, many countries gave it points, and a lot of countries had it among their top songs. France did not get any twelves, but Austria and Hungary rewarded it with 10 points, and three others gave it their 8 points. In total, France got 94 points and became 4th. It was another song in the long row of good scoring entries from France.

UEFA 2020 eighth finals: DAY 2

We already go to the second day of the eighth finals in the European Soccer Championship. The first match is between Czech Republic and The Netherlands. For this match, we go back to 1968. The Czech Republic did not participate, but one of the most popular Czech singers, Karel Gott, represented Austria. He sang “Tausend Fenster”. The Netherlands were represented by one of their most popular singers: Ronnie Tober. He sang “Morgen”. During and after Eurovision, the two became friends. They remained so until Karel Gott passed away in 2019. The other match of today will be between Belgium and Portugal. We have only one song here that combines both countries. In 2005, Belgium was represented by Nuno Resende. The singer was born in Porto but moved to Belgium with his family when he was 12.

UEFA: Eighth finals

Finally, the eighth finals of the European Soccer Championship will start. The first match will be between Wales and Denmark. When we come to these countries, red is the thing. The Welsh dragon is red, the Dannebrog, the Danish flag, is also red. In 1990 both the United Kingdom and Denmark had a singer with a red dress. For the UK it was Welsh girl Emma with “Give a little love back to the world”. For Denmark we saw Lonny Devantier singing “Hallo hallo”. Tonight’s other match will be between Italy and Austria. And we remain in 1990: both countries chose the uniting of countries as their subject. With “Insieme: 1992”, Italian Toto Cutugno sang about the birth of the European Union in 1992. With “Keine Mauern mehr” Austrian Simone sang about the vanishing of the iron Curtain.