eurovision-revisited

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2009 - Bonus Content! - Hreindís Ylva Garðarsdóttir Holm - "Vornótt"

Occasionally a national final has a song that's a family affair. Iceland, being such a small nation in terms of population, has probably had more familial groups on stage than most. Though sometimes, it's one member of a family on stage and another writing the song.

Here is Hreindís Ylva Garðarsdóttir Holm. She is primarily an actress, working in film, on the stage and starting out on a path that will lead to becoming a teacher and director. She also sings. Hreindís Ylva's grandmother is Erla Gígja Þorvaldsdóttir is an amateur songwriter from Sauðárkrókur who enjoys playing around on the organ she has at home.

In 2009, Erla wrote a song together with neighbour, Icelandic dairy scientist (really) and poet Hilmir Johannesson in their small northern Icelandic community. Hreindís Ylva sang it and they submitted to RÚV in the open submission they'd opened for Söngvakeppni Sjónvarpsins 2009. In total RÚV received 217 entries this year, and one of the entries they chose was this one, from a group of people who'd previously had no interaction with the Icelandic music industry.

Vornótt (Spring Night) is a waltz filled with melancholy, longing, hope and heartbreak. It's essentially the song of solitude that an Icelandic girl might sing on a lonely night at the onset of spring, when the world is returning to life after the long dark, Icelandic winter. Hreindís Ylva sings about a previous spring night that was filled with love, joy, sunlight and flowers, the memory of which she now both treasures and curses in her isolation.

It's exceptionally poetic and at its core, it's a simple folk dance, but one that has some magnetic properties. Hreindís Ylva's innocence draws you into this world filled with nature, magic and birds flying around her.

2009 saw a boy who was in love with a fairytale win Eurovision. Here is the fairytale herself, alone and waiting for him to return.

The folk song from the northernmost coast of Iceland managed to qualify from its heat and make into the final. However, that's where this magical tale drew to a close as Vornótt didn't make the super-final. There were other stories being told for Iceland this year, but this one deserves to be remembered. It's such a quintessentially Icelandic tale.

Hreindís Ylva returned to Söngvakeppni Sjónvarpsins in 2013, again making the final, and that same year she released an album of folk songs by Erla Thorsteinn, but her true calling was to the stage. She's since taken on roles in the National Theatre of Iceland, performed one woman shows, toured performances around Iceland schools and appeared in RÚV television dramas.

She's also active in politics, becoming chairperson of the Young Left Greens in Iceland in 2018 and staying in that role for four years.

This is one of her songs from 2013, Tvö Ein (Two One)

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Eurovision 2009 - Bonus Content! - Alexander Rybak - "Fairytale"

So why isn't the most popular, enduring Eurovision winner ever in my top 64 for 2009?

Well, there's always the fact that it came up against songs that I like more relatively early on in the bracket, but that would be burying the real reason. And that is that I'm just not that fond of it.

Yes, it's slick, charming, and professional. I can appreciate the craft here and understand why this was such a favourite in the odds that ended up being a runaway winner on the evening. The most points ever scored in the grand final to this point. A song that's been in Eurovision's monthly chart of the top 20 streamed songs seemingly constantly for years.

More than that. Fairytale is a runaway winner that felt like it was restoring order to Eurovision after years of voting issues, expansion issues, old divisions across Europe rising to the top, discontent, manipulation, and parody entries.

It's a quintessential Eurovision entry - this is the sort of thing that (almost) everyone watching and hearing can say, yes, that's Eurovision and that's what we want from Eurovision. A song with echoes from the 1970s and 1980s. A song full of folk motifs and tradition. A song that transcends voting blocks. A song that appeals to all. It's a song that inspired other songs, not least of which was the entry in the 2010 Lithuanian national final I Love a Boy Who's in Love with a Fairytale.

The whole of Europe seemingly fell in love with Alexander and his innocent grin almost overnight. He was born in Belarus and thus like many of the acts this year had a Soviet connection, upping the appeal to the Russian diaspora - something that a lot of delegations seem to have worked out was the way to get more votes outside of traditional areas.

His fame was almost entirely instant. He'd appeared on the Norwegian version of Pop Idol in 2006. He'd performed on stage in Fiddler on the Roof, but that was about it. Alexander appeared like a genie - out of nowhere to grant wishes and sing about fairytales. He did go on to write and record other music, but nothing topped the moment on the stage in Moscow in 2009 when he became a Eurovision legend.

He did represent Norway again in 2018, but somehow managed to finish only fifteenth after winning the semi-final. He's released five albums and joins the ranks of national final alumni in recording a voice in a film - in his case he's the Norwegian Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon. He's toured extensively and perhaps has been pushed a bit too far as he's suffered from bouts of fatigue, exhaustion and fits of anger. The world can't seem to get enough of Alexander.

However, I'm one of those Eurofans who never really got either him or the song. To me, Fairytale feels like a throwback, rather than a song that looks forward. A comfort song from the times of the financial crisis, when Europe as a whole desired stability, security and the opportunity for escapism. It feels like a trip to the beach to paddle in the gentle waves of nostalgia and childhood.

It's not fresh. It's too familiar. It's an abandonment of everything interesting that's been going on at Eurovision in the national finals for the past few years. So, even though it's a slick enjoyable song, to me it also carries a manufactured, palliative aftertaste.

Not for me then - but Fairytale is so big that I can't truly ignore it. There was still a huge chance that it would make my list for the year despite my misgivings, but the draw killed off that possibility relatively quickly. There are songs that did make my top 64 that I think aren't as good as Fairytale - but that's what happens when running a bracket.

Here is Alexander performing during the interval of this year's (2025) Maltese national final with Roll with the Wind

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Eurovision 2009 - Number 1 - Inga & Anush - "Jan Jan"

2009 saw the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan find a new venue at Eurovision. Although actual fighting between the two in 2009 was at a low ebb, that lack of bloodshed seemed to transfer the hostilities to non-traditional venues. Like Eurovision. Both sides were determined to wind the other side up with the EBU stuck in the middle trying to act as referee, conflict de-escalator, and increasingly tetchy parent.

Part of the problem was that Armenia had sent a song and an act that went down extremely well in both Turkish and Persian cultures. Traditional and modern all at the same time and sung by two sisters with magnificent, delicate and strong Armenian voices singing both in harmony with each other and about harmony throughout a sisterhood.

Inga and Anush Arshakyan had been singing as a folk duo for just under a decade prior to Eurovision 2009. They'd toured the world promoting Armenian music and culture extensively including performances in the USA. At the time of their second album released, their tour included stops in Russia, Tehran, the US, Germany and London. Their music was popular not just among the Armenian diaspora, but across the region including in Iran and Azerbaijan.

It had been rumoured that Armenia and AMPTV would internally select the band System of a Down, which even though it was only a rumour, started protests from Azerbaijan and Türkiye as it was likely they wouldn't hold back in singing about the Armenian genocide. However this was only ever a rumour as AMPTV announced they would be selecting their song via national final, Evrotesil 2009.

Inga and Anush entered with Ջան Ջան (Jan Jan) an infectious song that combines folk music and dance, ethnic instrumentation together with electronic pop. As with the melange of musical influences, it also combined English and Armenian in a heady mix. Written by Mane Hakobyan, Vardan Zadoyan and Armenian TV presenter and song-writer Avet Barseghyan, it's fun and exactly the heady stuff that Eurofan dreams are made of. It romped home in the national final, winning both the jury vote and the televote.

There's nothing particularly about the song that is political at all. It's just a fun, folky pop tune that shows two voices. However as soon as it won, Azerbaijan called for it to be banned on the grounds that it plagiarized an Azerbaijani folk song by an Azerbaijani composer, Tofig Guliyev. That claim was investigated and found to be groundless on the basis that the "songs barely resemble one another with only slight similarities of regional rhythms and instrumentation".

The conflict didn't stop there, but the sniping between the two countries couldn't overshadow the performance of Inga and Anush on the stage in Moscow. Their harmonies and melodies wove through each other like the hair on their costumes. At once elegant and joyful, it's a song that demands that you smile. The part in the bridge where each sister takes alternate notes, splitting a harmony both in terms of pitch and which notes each part sings is so intricate and yet so confidently pulled off, it makes me feel dizzy. This is what musical filigree sounds like. Jan Jan is one of my all time favourite Eurovision entries.

They safely qualified from the semi final in fifth place, then in the final they finished tenth. It's one of those performances that stood out both on the night and in the memory as something distinct and different when surrounded by pop and ballads.

Now it's Jan Jan that's remembered and not the continued controversy that included Armenia featuring a statue located in Nagorno-Karabakh in their postcard and then again as the background image for their spokesperson, Azerbaijan blurring the voting number for the Armenian entry, then interrogating some Azerbaijani residents who voted for Inga and Anush at the Ministry of National Security.

It's also notable that 2009 is one of only two occasions when one of these two countries gave the other points. Armenia gave Azerbaijan a single point in the grand final.

Later in 2009, the sisters released their third album and toured to support it, not only in Armenia but also in Syria and Lebanon. Jan Jan was often heard all round the region including on radios in Iran. They gave another big concert in 2011 and also released a fourth album in 2014. Inga went back to Eurovision for Armenia in 2015 as part of the group Genealogy - with a song that was a lot more focussed on the Armenian genocide that Jan Jan ever was.

This is the performance of their song Գութան (Gutan/Plough) from their 2011 concert spliced with the video and some more impromptu performances. It's another song that combines folk elements and imagery from the Armenian countryside with some much more Western instrumentation.

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Eurovision 2009 - Number 2 - Flor-de-lis - "Todas As Ruas Do Amor"

The Festival da Canção 2009 was a bit of an oddball. The open submission and selection process resulted in several unknown names finding themselves in the online selection round, then there was the whole irregular voting scandal that online selection processes almost inevitably occur when democracy puts people behind keyboards.

The resulting twelve song competition managed the feat of putting forward some intriguing new prospects, having a variety of genres and musical styles and retaining its distinctly Portuguese flavour. Maybe even strengthening that sense of cultural identity. One of the acts doing this were Flor-de-lis

They were a folk group mixing percussion, poetry, Portugal and sounds from around the world in a mix of upbeat and a relaxed vibe. The core of the group were singer Daniela Varela and percussionist Pedro Marques.

For their FdC song, Todas as ruas do amor (All the Streets of Love), the songwriters were Pedro and wind player Paulo Pereira. They also added famed accordionist Ana Sofia Campeã to the line up - and I'm a sucker for a Eurovision song with an accordion. It's a heartwarming, swirling dance of joy. A song about love between a couple and between people and the world. It's all finished up (at least in the grand final performance) with an infectious little laugh of delight from Daniela. It is truly one of those songs that just makes you feel happy at a fundamental level, the worries and concerns of the world melting away over the course of three minutes.

They managed to get through the internet selection stage in seventh place in the online vote. Not so high, but at least they weren't accused of trying to fix the vote.

That got them to the televised final and two entirely different sets of people distributing the points. Juries and televotes are different beasts to online votes and have different tastes. For the jury especially Flor-de-lis were exactly what they wanted, fitting into Portugal's Eurovision history like a hand in glove. The public weren't that far behind - the more conservative and less chaotic nature of phone voting putting the band in second place. A win and a little bit of an unexpected one too.

Their colourful staging and Daniela's infectious, smiling voice propelled them through their semi-final in eighth place, but it seems there was something about the song that made everyone feel happy. It wasn't a stand out on the night, but it got a steady amount of points from juries and televotes alike. It finished eighteenth in each vote but in the quirky way in which those scores were combined, that resulted in Portugal and Flor-de-lis finishing fifteenth in the final scoreboard.

2010 became Flor-de-lis's peak period with an album out later that year. They released a new single at a rate of about one a year for a few years but mostly spent their time performing their repertoire and heartfelt songs and poetry. After a hiatus, the 2020 pandemic break brought and stop to touring but a start to more recorded output.

From a year after the lockdown, this is Flor-de-lis performing Obrigado

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Eurovision 2009 - Number 3 - Regina - "Bistra voda"

They came on stage in Moscow looking like ghosts from a Napoleonic conflict. Were the fallen returning after defending Russia against the French? The look was certainly a choice.

Regina, the band themselves, were no strangers to war having been temporary split up by the Bosnian war in 1993. Formed in Sarajevo as far back as 1989, the bulk of the band were Bosnian Serbs who fled to Belgrade when the war started. Lead singer Davor Ebner remained behind. Post-war, the band remained separated in the various parts of former Yugoslavia.

The remnants of Regina took part in Beovizija 2004, the Serbian half of the Serbian and Montenegrin national final that year under the name Aco Regina. They didn't make it to the final. In Bosnia, Davor also took part in a national final, BH Eurosong in 2001. He did slightly better, finishing seventh of the nineteen songs that year.

Then, in 2006, they reunited and ended up supporting the Rolling Stones during the concert in Budva. A new album followed, as well as several hundred tour dates around the Balkans, and Regina reclaimed the popularity they'd had prior to 1993. In 2009, BHRT held an open submission for songs to be internally selected as Bosnia's representative in Moscow.

Bistra voda (Clear Water), written by founder band member Aleksandar Čović, is a song about protection, defence and keeping what is yours, in a time when the sun is faint and other souls are departing. The look is actually supposed to be reminiscent of Soviet 1920s constructivist art. Upturned smiling faces basking in the glories of reconstruction and labour. Yet the song is sad. The world falls apart while the band stands stoic and eternally guarding the home in faces of extinction.

The chorus is

Rodi me u majsku zoru Kupaj me u bistroj vodi Čuvam jedan svijet kad svi drugi odu Čuvam te dok ѕаm živ

or

Give birth to me at dawn in May Bathe me in the clear water I guard one world, when all others leave I guard you as long aѕ I'm аlive

Whether this is about Moscow in 1812 or Sarajevo in 1993 or even something more general about love in times of war, it's certainly powerful and still. The steadfast poses, like statues watching over us, certainly stick in the memory, the past coming to life with a drumbeat and a chorus in unison.

It did well, safely qualifying from semi-final one in third place, then finishing ninth in the grand final. Regina released an album later in the year containing Bistra voda, then another two studio albums and a live album in the following decade. Bassist Denis Čabrić died of a heart attack in 2016, then the band finally called it a day in 2022 when Davor left to restart his solo career.

This is Kad paludimo (When We Go Crazy) from their post 2009 songs

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Eurovision 2009 - Number 4 - Urban Symphony - "Rändajad"

Two Estonias in a row! And two songs by Sven Lõhmus in a row. What's more, as beloved as this song is among Eurovision fans and how it seems to have been anointed as the first Eesti Laul winner with an unassailable number of points at the top of the final, it almost failed at the final hurdle.

Urban Symphony were a group of string players formed around Sandra Nurmsalu, a singer and violinist who knows the power of a perfectly level and horizontal fringe. She took part in the 2007 edition of Kaks takti ette, the singing competition that took place in Estonia every few years to find the best young singing talent in the country. This was the final edition of the show. She didn't win, but while on the show, and as one of the challenges on the show, she formed Urban Symphony with students from her former music school with whom she'd previously arranged the Metallica song Nothing Else Matters for a string quartet.

After the talent show ended, even though Sandra didn't win, Sven Lõhmus had seen the performance by Urban Symphony and saw something. He wrote them Rändajad (The Nomads) and sent them to Eesti Laul. They won, getting the maximum marks from the jury and finishing second in the televote. The super-final was almost a forgone conclusion as the faced Traffic, who had finished a long way below them in that televote. If the jury hadn't buried Laura's song, that might have won the super-final instead, but it missed on second-place by a single point.

Urban Symphony went to Moscow and the first Eurovision to feature juries in the grand final for years. First though, they had to impress televoters as the semi-finals were still completely in the hands of the public. To do that they had a pop-classical song in Estonian about a mythical journey alone along a path through disparate landscapes. It feels distinctly eastern and magical. That mystery together with Sandra's distinct look and a wind machine saw them safely through semi-final two in third place and broke Estonia's six year long non-qualification streak.

In the final, Urban Symphony had the benefit of the juries, who were always going to buy into their elegant, high-production and musically distinct performance. They finished fifth with the juries and remained high in the televote. Sixth overall and back in the top ten for Estonia for the first time since 2003. The song has lived on as a Eurofan favourite ever since, finishing as the ninety-sixth favourite Eurovision song of all-time in the most recent songfestival.be top 250.

Urban Symphony released two more singles before splitting up. The band returned to music school and classical strings, while Sandra has had two subsequent attempts to go solo, both times with Eesti Laul appearances - first in 2014 (again with Sven Lõhmus writing), then again in 2019.

Outside of music Sandra has five children with poker player Tommy Kask whom she met when she was sixteen. Together they dabble in Estonian politics with Tommy aiming to lead smaller centre-right parties and Sandra advocating socially conservative views against COVID vaccination and same-sex marriage.

This is Sandra's performance of Päikese poole (Towards the Sun) on Estonian TV from 2015.

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Eurovision 2009 - Number 5 - Laura - "Destiny"

The final of Eesti Laul 2009 took place on the 7th March 2009. One week later, La Roux released In for the Kill signifying 2009s fondness for synthwave and all things electronic from an imagined past. Normally it takes a few years for Eurovision and the national finals to reflect musical trends, but here's that rarest of things. A song that's exactly of the moment.

The partnership here is Laura Põldvere and Sven Lõhmus. Laura has already represented Estonia at Eurovision as part of the band Suntribe in 2005. That year, she also came second in Eesti Laul. Both the winning song and her solo song in 2005 were written by Sven. He had a long Eurovision history with Estonia. His first EuroLaul effort was as far back as 1998, and he'd had several other songs since including Vanilla Ninja's Club Kung-Fu in 2003 and Laura's second EuroLaul song in 2007.

As in 2005, Sven was making double-sure that he got to Eurovision in 2009. Not only had he written this song for Laura, but he also wrote another song... ...which we'll get to. For now let's stick to the synths and robots and neon and sunglasses of Destiny.

It feels like a song that needs an oscilloscope. The waveforms of those synths accompanied by occasional strings and a compulsive chord sequence and computer game sound effect provide a cyberpunk bed over which Laura gets to provide a relatively clean and simple melody line while wearing the uniform of all disco queens of the galaxy.

That chorus hits when the second synth line comes in and Laura gives her call to action. Tell her her destiny. I'm fairly sure that Asimov's laws of robotics weren't clear on what robots should do when a human demands the impossible, and Laura is really testing that grey area.

I love it, but then I really did like the synthwave revival - this is my thing entirely. More please!

Given that the last four songs in my top ten have been alternating songs from Estonia and Norway, and that this is the sixth song from then ten songs in Eesti Laul 2009 I've included, you'll understand that it was a very strong year in Estonia. Laura had tough competition and unfortunately she fell just short of the super-final. She was top of the televote (yes, even beating the winner), but the jury only placed her sixth, killing her chances and the song. She ended up in third overall.

No matter. Laura would certainly be back as would Sven. She's been in three more national finals, including the 2017 Eesti Laul which she won and again represented Estonia at Eurovision. She sang in Finland's UMK in 2021 too. Sven's other song won this year. His songs also won in 2011 and he wrote Laura's winning song in 2017.

There will definitely be more Sven and more Laura in the future, but for now here's something from the past. This is Laura's 2007 Euro Laul entry Sunflowers, which got knocked out of my bracket alarmingly early thanks to an unfortunate draw.

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Eurovision 2009 - Number 6 - Foxy - "Do It Again"

Foxy are two teenagers, Christina Alexandra Jomark and Charlotte Brænna. They both attend the West End dance Studios in Oslo and they've clearly got something together here as they've managed to commission a song from Hanne Sørvaag.

Hanne already has Eurovision songs in her back catalogue (Germany 2008 for instance). She also wrote Velvet Inc's song Tricky, the one that was in contention for a Britney Spears song. To be able not just to pick up one of her songs, but to actually commission her to write a song specifically for the group is somewhat unusual.

Hanne has a co-credit alongside Harry Sommerdahl for the song and what they've created should have been a fine launchpad for Foxy the duo to go on to become pop regulars in Norway.

Do It Again is electronic pop par excellence. Like Tricky, this sounds like something written for someone like Britney Spears, full of attitude, posing, and hooks all over the place. Dressed in black PVC, heels and with blonde slicked back and accompanied by two friends as animalistic backing dancers, this was aimed squarely at Britney's core audience too.

Foxy were a teenage girl pop fantasy act from a stage school - but the problem was that the heyday of this was at the tail end of the 1990s and early 2000s. By 2009, this was yesterday's news and beginning to look a little frayed around the edges. Even two or three years previously, it might have been a challenger, but now, despite being addictively re-playable, it didn't do well.

Scraping through the heat of Melodi Grand Prix in absolutely the last chance of saloon by winning a poll of readers of VG newspaper to find the favourite non-qualifier, Foxy were rescued and put into the second chance final... ...where they promptly lost out to Jane Helen.

It was not to be and Foxy flopped. This wasn't really too much of an issue for Charlotte who was already looking at a career in musical theatre, something that she's done ever since. She's still connected to West End Studios as a teacher too. Christina has tried to go it alone and has tried writing her own songs and releasing them as well as singing backing vocals for others.

Both half of Foxy are still dream of success and of Eurovision, maybe one day they'll find a path

This is Christina's song Tokyo, released in 2021

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Eurovision 2009 - Number 7 - Traffic - "See päev"

It was the first year of Eesti Laul and more changes were afoot, but the old guard were hanging around and didn't seem to want to go anywhere. Ithaka Maria, front woman of Slobadan River was back and trying to win, but then so was the guitarist from that band, a certain Stig Rästa.

He'd formed a new band with singer Silver Laas, a band who are going to become very familiar names at Eesti Laul and in Estonia generally. In a year full of traffic jams, Traffic were taking centre stage and challenging for the win.

They'd already entered the Estonian national final once before, the year before, 2008. They'd not done too well on that occasion. This time, they had a song written by Stig and Estonian song-writer, producer and Downtown studios founder Fred Krieger. That's another name that's going to be cropping up in Estonia for a decade or so.

See päev (This Day) is guitar indie rock, stadium filling rock, lighter-waving rock. It had a grandeur and a doomed romance about it, but that's because it's about doomed romance. Silver is in love, but all he can think about is things coming to an end. Bridges burning, neck-deep in the ocean, skies and stars falling. Fatalistic and therefore seize the day before everything's gone. It's a song with a universe spanning scope.

It's also another use of a vocal being altered by one of the instruments in the group. No actual Talk Boxes are visible here, so it's pre-recorded backing vocals being fed into the synth this time, but it makes a disorienting and ethereal effect of the ghosts from the future acting as the chorus, while the guitars step down through the power chords.

In possibly any other year, this might have won Eesti Laul, but like MGP, Estonia was having a golden year. The songs they found to launch the new incarnation of the national final were a signal that something was happening in the northernmost Baltic state and even though Estonia's national flavour was already present, the next few years were going to fix the Estonian sound in elegant cement. Traffic would be key to that.

The band finished second in the jury vote and fourth in the televote, but this was enough for second position overall and a place in the superfinal. It's not too surprising given that televote performance, but when it came to the superfinal results, they lost heavily to the eventual winner.

The band were already well-known in Estonia and no strangers to the Estonia charts. This song was released as a single and did well. More singles and albums flowed and Traffic took part in Eesti Laul on another five occasions after this, giving them seven appearances in total. The group even survived Stig leaving to go solo in the mid-2010s. I wouldn't be surprised, given their popularity, if they enter Eesti Laul again in the future.

As a manifesto, Me ei lõpeta (We Won't Stop) sounds apt, it's also the name of their most recent single, released two weeks ago with a video featuring pretty anyone and everyone who's been in Eesti Laul over the years - how many of these faces can you name?

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Eurovision 2009 - Number 8 - Jane Helen - "Shuffled"

Like Jane from 2006, Jane Helen is not a woman. They're another band. Formed in the early 2000s, they're an all-female rock band with a distinct sense of aggression. They've also written one of the all-time sweariest national final songs.

Originally a trio consisting of drummer Christine Litlekalsøy (aka Christine Litle), Sandra Ekdahl on guitar and Dordi Drønen the singing bassist, they expanded and shifted roles by recruiting drummer Mona Wol and guitarist Solveig Vaaland. Dordi stepped back to do backing vocals while Christine stepped away from the drum riser and took on lead vocals.

Their inspirations are Throwing Muses, The Clash and especially Iggy Pop, and for a period in the 2000s, the future looked rosy. They reached the national finals of the 2005 battle of the bands. That in turn brought them to the attention of the German music industry and tours of Germany followed. There was a 2007 EP, and an album was in the process of being written and recorded in 2009. One of the tracks from that future album turned out to be Shuffled

Starting out with one of the bassier rumbles in a national final to date, it builds through a verse until Christine releases her anguish, frustrations and anger in a series of fucks and screams accompanied by fireworks and driving guitar and bass riffs. That bass though.

This ain't manufactured scandi-pop. This is vocal-cord rasping, vocal-coach baiting metal ripped straight from the spleen and vented on an unsuspecting Melodi Grand Prix audience. Yes, this is the year that girl-bop mutated into female-fronted rock bands, but Jane Helen and Shuffled aren't a contrivance of the music industry, this is a group who were set on this course years before and were determined to show what they were about.

Shuffled is a refreshing shock to the system and a reminder of the music that Eurovision and the national finals overlook on a repeated basis in an attempt to appeal to the middle ground.

Maybe surprisingly, this did OK. In what you might be realising was one of the all time great MGPs, they were drawn in the same heat as Alexander Ryback, and failed to progress to the final. But they did get a place in the second chance final. There they won their first duel, but just failed to make it through the second. Jane Helen were within touching distance of the final, but fell just short.

No matter. Their long brewing album came out in 2010 filled with more of the same heavy nightmares and spike-pits filled with broken and sharpened bass strings.

And then they seem to have split up. I don't know why or if anything happened. Maybe it was just that the album wasn't hugely successful. Solveig was already working with another band called Wicked Fairies by the time it came out. Christine pops up again later in the 2010s in a distinctly more electronic band called KIST, which I think might be a name for a solo project by her.

Two songs because I'm that impressed with Jane Helen. First more of the same from the 2009 album, this is Beautiful

and from her last project, this is Christine Litle and KIST and Release Me Now

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Eurovision 2009 - Number 9 - Nano - "Traitor"

Anna Nova is a singer from St. Petersburg who appears to give everything a try at least once. Ice skating, language learning, gymnastics, swimming, tennis and learning to play the flute. The last once appears to be the one that she stuck with the longest as she before the group Nano formed around her, she was a flautist in the folk music group Firebird.

However all that try-harding did get her noticed by producer Andrei Sergeev, who started an "Anna Nova project". A few songs followed including a song record to support Zenit St.Petersburg. Nano formed when four students from St. Petersburg University for Culture and Arts decided to be in a band. They and Anna were put together and the Nano project was born.

First stop Evrovidenie. The only issue was that Anna was a ballad singer, more classically inclined while Nano liked to rock out. No matter, the band's management whisked them off to Sweden and introduced them to some song-writers. In this case, the song-writers are only one-third Swedish technically with Fanny Bjurström contributing. The other two thirds and from the UK - David Clewett and Ivar Lisinski. It's not a prolific group with all of them only being responsible for one other national final song. David and Ivar wrote 1000 and One Nights in 2004.

The Swedish pop pedigree is apparent in Traitor, although it's presented with something of a distinctly Russian flourish. At its core, this rock song has a heart of pure pop. Anna is a bit miffed. Her partner has gone a little too far and now he's gotta go. To send the message she put on her favourite cyberpunk outfit and turned all her attitude dials up to eleven.

The song rockets along in a way that's involving, addictive and full of satisfying you've-just-been-dumped energy. However, in the year that Russia was hosting Eurovision, this wasn't exactly what the public were looking for. Nano and Traitor received only two percent of the televote, marooning them in joint eleventh place of the sixteen songs.

They would return for another go in 2010. A few singles were released and some small gigs organised, but that was about it for the band. As for Anna I'm unsure. Confusingly there are at least two other Anna Nova's, one of whom is contemporary with the one who appeared at Evrovidenie. I have no confirmation of whether Anna continued to sing after Nano broke up - or if she just opened up an art gallery and learned to ride a horse.

This is Get Ready (English version) - also released in 2009.

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2009 - Number 10 - Alexia & Mario Lavezzi - "Biancaneve"

This is Alexia's fourth and final Sanremo appearance. She joins the select few who have had every single one of their national finals in my top lists for each year. Dimmi come..., Per dire di no, and Da Grande before this have all been excellent. Alexia thought that this song was so good, she insisted that the man who wrote it for her join her on stage at Sanremo itself and sing it as a duet.

Mario Lavezzi is a guitarist and song-writer who'd had an exceptionally long and successful career in Italian pop and rock music. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he'd been in a succession of bands and groups including The Trappers and Il Volo (not that one, the 70s prog rock group). It was during this period that he met his song-writing partner Mogol. They've had a successful collaboration ever since.

In the 1980s, he moved more into writing music for others. Initially he had a highly successful collaboration with Loredana Bertè that stretched over the course of several of her albums. He also wrote for Anna Oxa, Loretta Goggi and Ornella Vanoni. He also wrote several one-off big hits for other artists.

He and Mogol were still writing together in 2009 when their song Biancaneve (Snow White) was given to Alexia. It's a little bit of a strange one. It's a tale of a May to December relationship between an older man and a younger man. There's also the Snow White imagery woven through it. He wants her to be the princess as he nears the halfway point of his life's apple. She isn't going for that. She'd prefer to be the witch. A witch that inflames his passion so much that she sets him on fire and consumes what remains.

There's a lot of eating in this one. In the end they can't live without each other regardless of their personalities, even though Alexia is adamant that she's nowhere near as demure as Mario would like.

This is very much a Sanremo power duo performing here. Alexia still sings effortlessly with power and emotion while Mario, less accustomed to the Sanremo stage is content to play his part and give Alexia the spotlight.

It didn't win. As Alexia had already won and this song was seen as more of a safe bet for the competition rather than a contender, it was going to do well, but not threaten the top spots. For Alexia, this was the launch single to a year of collaborations with other singers and an album Ale & c. which is effectively her album from the previous year redone only with many guests joining her. The songs got loads of airplay and entered the Italian charts.

For Mario, he also had an album out in 2009, but by and large he kept on doing what he'd been doing for two decades already. His work and songs were always in demand and the industry respected his work and his consistency. He and Mogol are still writing songs together today. He's also been a significant voice in the Italian industry for protecting copyrights and credits for all creative workers.

From two years ago, this is Mario's duet with Cristina Di Pietro and Una storia infinita (A Neverending Story)

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2009 - Number 11 - Linas Adomaitis - "Tavo spalvos"

Linas Adomaitis is a man with a Talk Box, and he's not afraid to use it. He's been part of the Lithuanian music scene since the fall of Communism and the Soviet Union and his CV reads like one of those people who is always doing something. When those around him need a break, he carries on doing new things often with a different name.

From a family of violinists, he was first in rap group M.A.N. (five albums in three years), then started pop and R&B group L+ (four more albums in another two years). With L+, he started winning awards. That group did more than 500 gigs and recorded with the Lithuanian Radio Orchestra.

After that there was another album under the name Adoms (one album) and found UAB Music studios and started up a radio show. Eurovision fans probably best know Linas from his collaboration with Simona Jakubėnaitė in the duo Linas and Simona who were Lithuania's 2004 Eurovision entry. Yes, that's him with the spiky blonde hair. Linas has always been well dressed though. I'm still trying to work out if they were an actual couple.

Linas and Simona released two more albums - and alongside this he was writing songs for other groups, founded another group, Backpackers and released another album of instrumental violin and guitar music. There is more, but you get the picture. There is no stopping Linas.

In 2009, he entered the Lithuanian national final for the third time with Tavo spalvos (Your Colours) and it is a very colourful song. He compares himself to a partner who is all the colours of the rainbow while Linas sings that he himself is pale and drab in comparison. He does all of this alone on stage with a synth, the aforementioned Talk Box, some black and white self portraits and a string section tucked off to the side.

And it works. It's self-written, of course. Linas's experience at song-writing, arrangement and rap is evident both in his rapid fire vocal delivery, but also the arrangement of the strings. He knows how to characterise different parts of a song's structure and layer them exactly right to fit. His weird, distorted voice is the gimmick that tops it off to make something both fun and memorable.

He did well. He would have been a familiar face at the time, but you never know what's going to happen. Luckily for Linas, he sailed through the heat and the semi-final to be one of the ten songs to make the final. There he ended up fifth, but as a reward he became one of Lithuania's jury members in Eurovision later on.

You might think that after all of this Linas might be thinking about taking his foot off the gas, but no. He hasn't even hit his career peak yet. That comes later on in the 2010s, but as he has (at least) two more national final appearances to come, I think I'm going to have to save more for later. Safe to say the man is a machine.

He has become a bit more evidently religious in more recent years and he's now recording more gospel infused songs - including this one with a vertigo-triggering video filmed at the top of the TV Tower in Vilnius with the GospelJonai group safely behind the safety wire.

This is Ateis diena (The Day Will Come) from 2024.

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2009 - Number 12 - Corbus Albus - "7 Days"

Back in 2003, three friends in Chisinau were looking for a singer for their band. Anna Constantinova answered their ad and Corbus Albus were born. Adding another guitarist a year later, the group spent three years playing the clubs of Chisinau and slowly gaining a following and awareness among the metal and rock fans in Moldova.

In 2007, they were invited to record a single, Trap, which was submitted for the Moldovan Eurovision entry - the one year that TRM decided to do everything behind closed doors. They weren't successful, but the song was released and it became a relative success for the band. Enough for them to want more.

In 2009, they tried again and this time it was a proper national final on TV. The song was 7 Days written by Anna and guitarist Denis Andreev, it wasn't just rock, this was metal. Actual, undeniable metal in a Moldovan national final. Lead singer Anna stood out, not only for her fringe, but for the strong, stable voice coming from someone so slight, that it doesn't look like that she should be able to maintain that level of vocal for the course of the song.

It's obvious from the outset that Anna has a stage presence that the camera loves. Her face is as expressive as her voice. It's a magnetic performance that speaks of a professionalism born of six years playing clubs. Unfortunately Moldova wasn't ready for such out, loud and proud metal - and if I'm honest, even though Lordi had won Eurovision in 2006, this is metal from an entirely different Richter scale. Grinding, gritty, dense this is the proper stuff. It's refreshing to hear this material in a national final as early as 2009.

They ended up in tenth place of the twenty songs, but that masks a significant divergence of opinion. There were three voting bodies. The televote, the jury and a committee made up of representatives from broadcaster TRM, and although the televote gave them nothing, and the jury ranked them low, the broadcaster's committee liked them enough to place them in joint sixth.

It appears that subsequently the band split, but Anna really hadn't had enough. She went solo and ended up working in a number of collaborations, typically just under the name Constantinova. She entered the 2010 national final (with the band Fusu), she submitted a song for the 2011 final which wasn't chosen and then decided to hook up with an Armenian dubstep group called Synops. Together they submitted a song to represent Armenia in 2012, however Armenia itself pulled out of the Eurovision held in Baku in the March of that year. She then moved into music video direction, film-making and working for a 'disruptive media company providing video on demand for the financial sector' in the Cayman Islands - all of which sound dubious and slightly sinister.

There may be more of Anna at a later date, but here is Corbus Albus's breakthrough single Trap

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2009 - Number 13 - Patricia Kaas - "Et S'il Fallait Le Faire"

In 2009 there was one overwhelmingly obvious choice for the French Eurovision representative. France Télévisions must have been happy that Patricia Kaas and her record company put her name forward, and from their options Patricia was the one they internally selected.

Why was she such an obvious candidate? In her long and starred career stretching back over two decades prior to 2009, one of the markets who truly appreciated Patricia's music was Russia. Stretching back into her early albums, Russia had always appreciated Patricia's flair for drama and song. To be fair, by the mid-1990s, she was embarking on world tours including China, South Korea, Vietnam and Thailand, but Russia felt particular affinity with her.

In 2008, she'd even recorded a song with Russian group Uma2rman and in 2009, her new album was being released in Russia first. Beyond her Russian fans, Patricia was also a world star with many awards, millions of sales and who knew how to perform on any stage anywhere in the world. Her metier was chansons, cabaret and jazz with a cool demeanour - very brand France.

The song was one of the one from her album Kabaret released in March of that year. She'd already started a 170 stop world tour to promote it when Eurovision took place. It was an ideal way to incorporate promotion of Eurovision appearance along with the commercial project of album promotion. Prior to Eurovision, she'd made appearances in Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, Luxembourg, Belgium, all over Scandinavia. Pretty much everywhere had an opportunity to see Patricia and hear her song prior to the big show.

That song was Et s'il fallait le faire (And If It Had to Be Done). It had been chosen by an international online fan vote to select which song from her album she should perform. This was the one chosen and again, what a clever way to both market an album, get fan buy-in and democratise the whole process of Eurovision song selection. It was written by Fred Blondin and with lyrics by Anse Lazio. Fred was a singer-songwriter with a back catalogue including songs sung by Johnny Hallyday and Julio Iglesias.

The whole package put together by France in 2009 has to be one of the Eurovision songs with the heftiest pedigree and most consummate professionalism wielded by a group of entertainers and promoters who truly knew what they were doing. It contributed greatly to the sense of grandeur and largesse that was Eurovision in Moscow in 2009.

On stage Patricia was everything she knew how to be. A presence that only needs a microphone, a mic stand and a spotlight to completely capture an audience. It takes a personality to fill a stage that big, but Patricia proved more than capable. As the piano triplet-ed its way through the song like a musical box someone had wound up and set going. Those vast LEDs displayed the meaning of the song in a variety of fonts and languages in an early challenge to rules surrounding subtitles.

To finish a dance alone with a little pirouette into a bow, all of Patricia's cabaret nous on display. It brought the house down. This is what the massive Moscow crowd wanted.

She came eighth. That included a fine fourth place with the newly reinstated juries but the televoting public liked fresher, louder, shinier things and she finished fifteenth with them. Nevertheless this was a good result for France and for all connected with the song. She even won the last ever Marcel Bezençon Artistic award for the best song as voted by previous Eurovision winners. Patricia got right back on with her massive world tour afterwards.

After a few more albums, Patricia has gradually throttled back her exhausting schedule. Her last studio album came out in 2016 and apart from some occasional, special one-off performances, she's stepped out of the spotlight. Her most recent engagement has been as a coach and mentor on the 2025 season of The Voice: La plus belle voix - the fourteenth season of the French installation of The Voice.

There is a huge amount of Patricia's back catalogue to discover, but from a live concert in 2002, also in Moscow, this is If You Go Away (Ne me quitte pas) - the English language version of the Jacques Brel song.

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2009 - Number 14 - André Rodrigues - "Não vou voltar a mim"

André Rodrigues is the singer in a band almost too small and local to have left a trace. Daren were a four piece band from Santo Isodoro in Portugal. There are no traces of them in any of the normal sources. I don't think they ever recorded anything and probably only played local gigs, if that.

As the Festival da Canção was holding an open submission in 2009 and André had a song, he must have thought "Why Not?". It was accepted under his name and was chosen as one of the twenty-four songs from the 393 entries to go into the online vote which would select the twelve songs in the national final.

The online round was not only subject to several contentious fraudulent voting allegations, withdrawals, disqualifications for plagiarism as well as some bigger names with national recognition who had represented Portugal at Eurovision before.

The song heading into this bear pit was Não vou voltar a mim (I Won't Come to My Senses). Self-written and sung by André, it's a slow burn pop ballad with electric piano and slowly, grandly building strings to provide the drama and to ratchet up André self-doubt and anxiety as he looks at himself in the mirror and hopes that those he loves don't abandon him.

It's a quiet scream of a song. Anguished to a point quite beyond saudade. And somehow, this completely unknown singer backed by a band no one knew either managed to finish fourth in the online vote and progress to the full televised final of the Festival da Canção 2009.

The band joined him on stage alongside André's friend Luis Vaz on piano and they played their hearts out during their big moment. It wasn't to be, however. The jury and the televote are quite different beasts to a group of more involved online voters. The juries at least gave him a point by placing him tenth of the twelve songs. The televote didn't even do that. He ended up in eleventh place.

If he and his band had been anything other than a part-time hobby outfit, they might have been in a position to exploit this fifteen minutes of fame. But there was no recording contract, no planned release, no gigs even. This was the peak of a musical career lived out of the spotlight. Of the members of his band, guitarist Pedro Sousa had a YouTube channel showing off his guitar skills for a while, but that's the only trace I can find of anything else after this at all.

But wow, what a three minutes of fame. This is one of those hidden gems from the national finals that almost no one knows about. It passed quickly in and out of the memory of even hardened Portuguese Eurovision fans.

Sometimes doing an open submission finds a song and a performance that would never, ever have been discovered with conventional methods.

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2009 - Number 15 - Renton - "I'm Not Sure"

Renton are a group of Polish art school indie rockers. Well economic college rockers anyway. They've got the look, they've got a drummer with the facial expressions of a startled gopher on watch duty and they've found two backing singers to provide some oohs and aahs. I haven't been able to verify if this is the case or otherwise, but I suspect they're named for the protagonist in Trainspotting.

They've been a band since 2003 with one notable hit that was repurposed for an ad for a mobile phone operator. Their much delayed first album, Take Off, only saw the light of day in 2008. Seeking to cash in on this new burst of public attention, they entered Piosenka dla Europy 2009 with a new single not included on the album.

Their sound is exceptionally British and maybe because of that westward looking approach to music and band-naming, their album was entirely in English, although they never appear to have toured the UK or Ireland at any point. For Eurovision however, English rock sensibilities were in vogue, or so the broadcasters thought.

I'm Not Sure is fidgety, khaki-clad, angst-pop filled with anxiety about a relationship. It was written by the band with lyrics by singer Marek Karwowski and guitarist Paweł Szupiluk and was perhaps trying a little too hard to be kooky and cool. However it was distinct in the Polish national final and it was also something the jury very much enjoyed.

It ended up winning the jury vote and getting their twelve points. However the Polish public were cooler. Renton ended up fifth in the televote leaving them in a tie for second place overall. That's a good finish and something that would have had almost its own niche on the Moscow stage.

It wasn't to be. The band stuck around for a bit, releasing their fourth single later in 2009, then their second album in 2011 (this time entirely in Polish) before evaporating gradually into the winds as bands tend to do when the money's not coming in. Their last release appears to be a single released online in 2017.

From their second album, this is the title track Niech wszystko staje się lepsze (Let Everything Become Better) demonstrating that they'd kept their signature sound even if they'd switched languages.