eurovision-revisited

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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

[eurovision-revisited]

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.

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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.

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2009 - Number 16 - Caroline af Ugglas - "Snälla snälla"

Caroline has returned to Melfest with her non-Melfest songs to give everyone a break from the pop. The twist of bitter in the barrel of industrial sweetener. The Baron's daughter among the wannabes. The woman who has no need of a team of six Swedish song-writers because she and her husband Heinz Liljedahl write all her songs, and who founded her own record label, Siloton, to release her songs in 2007.

To say that Caroline sticks out is somewhat underselling it and that's before I get to her voice. The sound of Sweden is polish. Smooth, shiny finishes that apply just as much to vocals as it does to stage costuming and choreography. Professional, rehearsed, slick. Caroline af Ugglas's voice pebbledashes that blemish-free render with a coating of grit and little pieces of broken glass. It's the pebble in the Melfest shoe, sticking jaggedly into the big toe of the Swedish music industry.

There's nothing wrong with her singing. Her voice is somewhat soulful, emotional, and wrought. Wrecked by devastating experiences and fashioned back into an instrument capable of expressing that hurt.

Snälla snälla (Please, please) is perhaps her most famous song. It's a simple song. It's a song about a woman pleading with her man not to walk out of the door and go to his other woman. She's hurt so much that she's over her shame about begging him to stay as it's all she has left before she's destroyed. That's it. The choruses and verses blend into one another so it becomes hard to tell which is which. It's more a mix of repeating motifs and rhetorical tricks strung into a melody of despair.

As the song goes on, it falls apart along with Caroline's voice. It harkens back to blues and blues storytelling. A women wronged. Not angry. Not angry yet, just devastated. Even if she is wearing the most Melfestacious turquoise boots.

Last time out, in 2007, Caroline was eliminated in the heat as the public couldn't find room for her. This time things were different. And thanks to the many different rounds of Melfest 2009 a little weird. It might be that it took some time for the Swedish public to warm up to her and her song, but as she sang it a total of five times in the competition this year, the structure worked in her favour. Here's a bullet-point trip through Caroline's 2009 Melfest experience.

Heat first round - sails through in second place

Heat duel - loses to the song that finished fourth some way behind her in the first round. Onto the second chance final

Second chance final first round duel - wins easily

Second chance final second round duel - scrapes a win by 111,009 votes to 107,425. Onto the final

Final - draws the death slot. In the jury vote, she finishes fifth. She smashes the televote, coming second and ending up second overall, only eleven votes behind the winner. A winner that was seventh in the jury vote.

Craziness.

It was a weird year in Sweden.

Caroline would be back. She returned to the competition one more time, in 2013. Apart from her choir and TV related activities, she got on with writing and recording more songs. She released an album containing Snälla snälla just as Melfest ended and it immediately went to the top of the Swedish charts. Her next two albums also went top ten in Sweden and she's released six more in total since 2009.

If you liked the bitterness - here's one of her most recent singles (2024), Fader vår (Our Father) which has to be the most anti-Melfest, anti-Scandi pop song recorded with its digs at autotune and sung spiritual opium.

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Eurovision 2009 - Number 17 - Lyana - "Vivo para a paz (Peace)"

It had been a decade since Liliana Pinheiro's first appearance at the Festival da Canção in 1999, and she'd decided it was time to try again. Now under the name of Lyana and with a distinctly different sound to the ballad she'd entered previously, Liliana was representing lusophone Africa with something deep and soulful.

And all we've got left of it is another ninety second clip of it on the official FdC YouTube channel. Come on RTP, release the full songs!

Unfortunately I haven't found out much about Liliana. She's been singing for a long time and has sung anything from the standards to gospel to reggae. Most of the video clips I've found of her singing have been in small venues and at community events. I can't find any track record of her involvement in the conventional music industry outside of her two entries in FdC

Her first song definitely had other people behind it, but as RTP was using an open submission process with judges picking the twenty-four songs to go forward to the online round. Liliana wrote and sang her own song and must have submitted it on the off-chance and this time she got lucky. No machine behind her, this is one woman with a voice and a song.

Vivo para a paz (I Live for Peace) is a dub so laid back and chill that you are almost going to be feeling more peaceful and smiling more broadly when you've heard it - well, the ninety seconds that exist of it. Above the oh so heavy bassline floats Liliana's voice attached to the rhythm by links formed of pure heart and deep love. This is such a rarity in the Eurovision or national final world and I love it. Not just because it's different, but because it's authentic and so, so real. We need some dub on the big grand final stage, and I guess if any country is more likely to do it, it's Portugal.

Unfortunately on this occasion, the one woman show was up against bigger names, more traditional music and more audience attention grabbing sounds. There were also several artists accused of trying to fix the online vote. She came twenty-first of the twenty-four songs in the online part of the vote and was eliminated.

Since this Liliana has continued to plough her own groove with a voice that mesmerises. This is Liliana at home with a microphone and a backing track, showing what she can do with gospel blues. Um milagre aconteceu (A Miracle Happened).

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2009 - Number 18 - Sunny - "Carrie"

Sunny is Solgunn Valstad, formerly lead singer with the band Jack, had been singing on TV for a long time. She'd participated in several children's talent shows on NRK including Juniorsjansen, Talentiaden and Da Capo! She was featured in the Norwegian version of Popstars when she was eighteen.

Even as she was doing that she'd started working with Hans Petter Aaserud, the guitarist in the band Trang Fødsel. Together they founded the band Jack, and put out three singles and an album full of pop-rock, punk girl attitude and some highly suggestive lyrics.

By the time 2009 came around, Jack were no more, but Solgunn was still working with Hans even if she'd changed her name to Sunny as she embarked on a solo career. The song they came up with together was Carrie. It's a slightly more mature version of the material they wrote for Jack with Sunny being less punky, slightly less suggestive, but still retaining something of their past stick-it-to-prudes attitude.

2009 saw a huge increase in the number of female-fronted rock and pop-rock in the national finals and Sunny/Solgunn had been doing this for most of the 2000s. It was her moment to shine, and she does give it all the welly she can muster with a tale of imagined summer indiscretions and abandonment.

It was a strong MGP year and she was in Alexander Ryback's heat. She didn't qualify directly to the final, but at least she made it to the second chance final. There her MGP journey ended as did her solo career. Nice try, but Sunny had the misfortune to be singing in Norway in 2009.

That wasn't quite the end of her career though. There were several more TV appearances to come. She's appeared on Beat for Beat several times and was a contestant on the Norwegian incarnation of The Voice in 2017. From that, here's Solgunn/Sunny singing a cover of The Foo Fighters' The Pretender

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2009 - Number 19 - Miguel C. - "Não está"

First things first in this tale of disgruntlement and voting shenanigans. This is only half a song. It's the official Festival da Canção YouTube channel, and it's the only version that I've found online. We're stuck with this for now.

You might think that this is only half a song because of what occurred during the online voting for FdC in 2009, but that's not the case. Some of the other songs that didn't make through the online round also have only ninety seconds of sound. I'm not sure if this was all online voters had to listen to in 2009, if so it seems somewhat unfair to songs with big finishes.

To go back to the beginning Miguel C. is Miguel Cervini guitarist and singer, and occasional member of the Band/Project Balla - a changing group of musicians surrounding Armando Teixeira. For FdC though, Miguel was going it solo and making a name for himself. The first stage was the online voting process. Twenty-four songs were in it, with twelve progressing to the televised final. Voting was via the RTP website and each day you could vote for your favourite song.

The voting took place over ten days or so between the nineteenth of January and the thirtieth. Throughout this process, RTP published daily vote totals, so that everyone could see who was getting the votes, and Miguel got many votes. One of the other things that RTP did during this voting process was remove votes that they deemed as fraudulent. Several of the acts had this happen to including some of the singers that qualified to the final. Miguel had over 4,000 votes removed from his total.

He disputed that the votes were fraudulent and withdrew from the contest before the online voting had closed.

Try as I might, I can't find out what the criteria were that RTP were using to determine if votes were fraudulent, how many votes deemed non-fraudulent Miguel Cervini had when he withdrew, nor how this process would have affected the vote for others. No one else withdrew, so I can only assume that those 4,000 votes meant the difference between qualifying and not qualifying for Miguel.

All that we're left with is this ninety second of his self-composed song Não está (It Is Not). It's a simple thing of guitar and voice weaving a tale together. Simultaneously so Portuguese and somehow scratching all those indie troubadour itches, the little bit that we got really makes me want to know how it ended and whether it might have qualified without the alleged voting manipulation.

You might not be surprised to hear that this was Miguel's one and only attempt to get onto FdC or qualify for Eurovision. He did stick around to play and record with Balla as well as doing session work with his guitar skills.

This is a song by Balla featuring Miguel on guitar from 2015 - Submundo (Underworld). I can't help but feel that FdC is missing out on acts such as this

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2009 - Number 20 - Velvet - "Tricky"

If you're going to use the question, "Are they better than the Spice Girls?" as your promotional tool, there's the risk that the audience will answer, "No, they're not better than the Spice Girls". You might be able to brazen this out under normal circumstances. But if you then enter your girl-group into a national final where the audience can deliver a public, quantifiable opinion on whether the group are indeed better than the Spice Girls, then fronting it out is going to be much much harder. Possibly even a terminal problem for your music project...

Velvet were a girl band brought together and managed by Mads Rogde, formerly of the Cheezy Keys. They were aspiring singers Charlotte Øverland Våset, Anette Amelia Larsen, Cornelia Børnick and Thea Bay. Charlotte was a stage musical actress appearing in a production of Cats, Anette was in Mamma Mia!, Cornelia was also in musicals, but of a less stellar nature, and Thea Bay was a dancer, choreographer and actress - also for stage productions. Just for a change, none of the band had been in any TV talent shows that I can find.

This was their first song and their first TV appearance. Even before they went on MGP, there were problems. There was another artist called Velvet (Jenny Marielle Pettersson) in Sweden. She'd appeared in Melfest twice already, and in 2009 she was competing again. If Velvet truly were better than the Spice Girls, there was the possibility of having two acts called Velvet on the stage in Moscow. The lawyers were armed and aimed, and the Norwegian Velvet backed down. At the time of the performance, Velvet had become Velvet Inc.

The song itself had some pedigree. It had been offered to Britney Spears for inclusion on her Circus album, but had been rejected. Tricky is by Hanne Sørvaag, Niclas Kings and Niklas Bergwall, a highly experienced group of songwriters. Hanne was well-known in the Norwegian music industry as a song-writer as well as having an album and a few singles of her own out. She'd also written Germany's 2008 Eurovision entry as well as a couple of MGP songs. Niclas and Niklas had written Belgium's 2006 Eurovision entry for Kate Ryan along with one of my favourites, Sivuoireita for the band Jane in the 2006 Euroviisut contest in Finland. It was a starry line-up and hopes must have been high for the launch of a new group.

And the girls delivered a performance. Given their professional background, this might have been expected. They're pitch perfect, harmonies all in place along with hitting those marks and knowing where the camera is. The song is polished pop, and has that debut-song-for-a-girl-group quality. Full of hooks and attitude. A statement song. If there's anything wrong here, you might criticise them for perhaps lacking a little in the sass, but that's a minor quibble there's nothing wrong with this at all.

Except for the comparison to the Spice Girls. Maybe without that this would have succeeded, maybe not. However MGP was stacked. Velvet Inc. did get through their heat and straight into the final without the need for duels or second chances. However, in that final, the big guns were firing. Four acts went through to the gold final, and Velvet Inc. were not one of them.

They had been proven not to be the next Spice Girls. As the members of Velvet Inc. all had ongoing day jobs on the stage, the group were quietly disbanded having failed to make it to Eurovision.

There is little in the way of anything after this as all four members of Velvet Inc. went back into stage acting and working away from the established music industry. However there is this clip of Anette Amelia Larsen appearing alongside Heidi Ruud Ellingsen on NRK game show Beat for Beat in 2013 singing Take Me or Leave Me from Rent.

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2009 - Number 21 - ŠokoLedas - "Plastmasinė širdis"

This is a moment of the spotlight burning a little bit too brightly. ŠokoLedas (Chocolate/Shock Ice?) are two women, Justė Mozolytė and lead singer/song-writer/group motivation Kristina Karalytė aka Sniegė. They were a band put together by Egmontas Bžeskas, TV Host and the man behind the girl-group 69 danguje (69 in the Sky - yes really).

Justė was interviewed for a place in the girl-group, but she wasn't too interested in being a singer, as her main skill was in dance. Nevertheless, Egmontas saw something in her and put her with Kristina. Kristina had started out in a duet with another Lithuanian singer, Karina Krysko-Skambinė. That ended when Karina did get a place in 69 danguje, leaving Kristina without a band but with a lot of songs that she'd written.

Thus ŠokoLedas was created - possibly as a second chance group for the two members. This was their TV debut I think and they had a big album coming out later in the year with all those songs on.

Plastmasinė širdis (Plastic Hearts), by Kristina is a tale of a so-so relationship. Yes, the attraction is there, but it's fading. There is much binding the couple together but frankly it's not like it was. The chorus is effectively the break-up happening there and then.

  Bet kalbant atvirai,   Viskas bus gerai,   Saulė neužges,   Jei išsiskirsim.   Kalbant atvirai,   Viskas bus gerai,   Laikas nesustos   Ir nenumirsim.

or

But to be honest,  Everything will be fine,  The sun will not go out,  If we part.  To be honest,  Everything will be fine,  Time will not stop  And we will not die.

Time to move on then. The song is like something from the 1980s. Two singers with massive amounts of hairspray in the hair, pink PVC outfits, band-name finger jewellery and attitude. The guitar solo coda is a little gratuitous and it might be that the guitarist is Linas, the band manager with whom Kristina was in a relationship.

Underneath the slight amateurishness and the rough, but authentic vocals is a damn fine pop song, that's got smarter lyrics than most as well as several great hooks and a good use of structure to tell a tale.

It came eleventh of the twelve songs in heat three. This together with the band's image and marketing attracted the tabloids smelling a feeding frenzy. There were also ugly rumours in the gossip press regarding Justė's relationships and Kristina's weight. The band was no more by 2010, Justė left Lithuania for Norway while Kristina stepped away from the microphone to write songs for others. She's written for many of the bigger Lithuanian girl-groups including Kristal, HIT and Sirenos

They did however leave a trace that Lithuanian pop fans remember. Both of them still appear in the press when there's a wedding or a baby. Kristina's most recent release (under her pseudonym Sniegė) is from 2016 when she got married to her pilot husband. It's called Šaukia pilotus dangus (The Sky Calls for Pilots)

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2009 - Number 22 - Alcazar - "Stay the Night"

This is Alcazar hitting the purplest of their patches. Now reduced to a threesome, they want you to Stay the Night with them. To this end, they've upped the concentration and refinement of their nu-disco europop to levels of significant concern to the regulatory authorities. This stuff is so saccharine that you should probably only consume it after seeking medical advice.

Not only have the band slimmed down to three, after the departure of Magnus Carlsson in 2005, but founder member Annikafiore (Annika Kjærgaard) left in 2007 when a re-assembly of the band was underway. That left more than a slot open in the line-up, so they asked Lina Hedlund, Melfest veteran and friend of the band, to join. Her unveiling was at a legendary night at G-A-Y in London where Alcazar performed alongside fellow Swedish club floor-fillers BWO and Army of Lovers.

The song was written by the band in conjunction with long-time song-writer for both Alcazar and BWO, Anders Hansson and he's now got the formula for this stuff down to a fine art. I'd venture to say that if you were to mention the words "Melodifestivalen" or "Swedish pop" to someone - they'd basically start singing this song. Even if they'd never heard it before. It's what you get if you boil down Melfest to its essence.

To go alongside the manufactured purity of the sound, Andreas Lundstedt, Tess Merkel and Lina had the charisma lasers full-powered up and pointing straight down the camera lens. They know what they're doing and they're probably able to do it in their sleep while smiling.

You'd think that this would be Alcazar's year, even if they were up against a whole smorgasbord of big Melfest names all vying for their Eurovision chance - and all of whom probably deserved it just as much as Alcazar. It was a stunningly strong Melfest line-up. Alcazar cleared the first hurdle with ease, winning their heat and stomping their way through the new duels to get straight into the final. No bothering with the second-chance round and its many-many head-to-head clashes.

It was a very tight final. The points were relatively evenly spread over six or seven different acts, with no one entirely sure who was going to win until the final televoting was revealed. For Alcazar it was another year of trying again. They ended up third with the juries and fourth in the televote to put them fifth overall. It only served to fire them up even more. Alcazar would return. As would all the band members as individuals. There is much, much more Alcazar to come.

As it's Lina's Alcazar Melfest debut, here she is from Melfest back in 2003.

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2009 - Number 23 - Cola feat. Lidiya Zablotskaya - "Gudok"

This is going to be one of those blogs almost entirely about who these people are rather than what they're doing now, or even much about the song. And first, sorry for the weird audio skips in this recording. It's the only one I can find.

It's made harder here because there is a fair degree of name confusion with both the singer and the group. Let's start with who they're not.

Cola/Kola/Кола are the group rather than the singer. There is a well-known Ukrainian singer called Kola, but she only started her career in 2017. And this act is credited as Гурт «Кола» in some places, so it's the band who are Kola. The singer is Lidiya.

She is also not Lidiya Zablotskaya, Belarus's much more famous 2011 Junior Eurovision entrant who would have been eleven in 2009. Unfortunately having another singer with the same name makes finding the right one much harder.

I have found out that this Lidiya is a singer in a band called любо дорого (Lyubo-Dorogo/Lovey-Dovey). Unfortunately there seem to be several bands of that name in Russia, Belarus and Moldova stretching over a period of several decades. It almost seems to be a franchise of traditionally dressed,folk singers touring and performing around Eastern Europe.

And that gets me back to Kola who are a band with one released (on audio cassette) who play a mix of folk music and electronica, and who appear to reference Depeche Mode as often as they can. The two song writers are Valery Shevchenko and either Vladimir Gridin or Boris Gridin (depending on which source you believe). If it's Boris he's a studio engineer who likes to play Depeche Mode songs on the vibraphone with spoons. Too much of a coincidence for me!

That gets me to the song, Гудок (Gudok/Honk) which from a band that is Belarusian for Wheels gives the folktronica song another traffic related theme after Probka. It's a bit raw especially in the vocals, but that feels like one of the things that makes this stand out as well as the grinding guitars and Lidiya's authentic white voice adjacent folk sound. It's distinctly different for 2009 and it's going to be at least another decade before this combination of sounds will become the Eurovision ideal for many Eurofans.

Unfortunately for Kola and Lidiya, they were too soon and they got eliminated at the first hurdle in semifinal of Eurofest 2009 and the tale is as old as time. It was one hundred percent jury-voted and as we all know, juries don't like ethnopop.

I can't find any more recent music by either Kola or Lidiya. Lidiya may have gone on to be an event coordinator and production supervisor for sporting and musical events in Minsk, while Kola appear to have evaporated as quickly as they appeared.