#kerli kõiv

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🕯️New era IGNITED!!!🕯️ Pre-save my next single: https://ffm.to/kerli.otw

[samanthasgone]

Credit: kerli

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Eurovision 2004 - Number 30 - Kerli Kõiv - "Beautiful Inside"

This is not Kerli's first appearance in my top lists - she made it in last year. It is however her first appearance in her native Estonia. Eurolaul 2004 had several Estonian favourites appearing, including Kerli. The competition would be tough.

Beautiful Inside is a marked contrast with Kerli's song at Melodifestivlen in 2003. That was a Spice-Girls-lite bop about a girl and her attitude. It was upbeat and fun with Kerli smiling her way through it. This is a downbeat, grungy, rockier number with Kerli trying to fend off negativity both from outside and from within. Kerli wants the world around her to leave her alone so that she can recover her calm, and at least some positivity.

It's a desperate, moody plea for control of her own thoughts. Although this style of girl rock was increasingly common in the charts all over Europe (and had been for a few years), this was not a genre of music, or a subject for a song that had any presence on the Eurovision stage. Grunge-pop was almost the antithesis of Eurovision. Dull not flamboyant. Introspective not extrovert. Downbeat not celebratory. Yet there is no denying that Kerli and Beautiful Inside fit with Eurolaul and with non-Eurovision mood of the moment.

It struck a chord with the Estonian public. It beat all of the songs from equally big name stars, perhaps because of its authenticity and representation of a whole group of music fans normally excluded from the Eurovision bubble. But it wasn't enough. It finished second, some distance behind something a whole lot folkier and Eurovision compliant.

There was another first going on here. Beautiful Inside was the debut of Timo Vendt as a song-writer at Eurolaul. He's a saxophonist and producer, now turning his hands to composing. He would go on to write two Eurovision entries for Estonia, including one that is not only one of Estonia's most celebrated entries ever, but is vastly different in style, genre and subject matter to Beautiful Inside.

Kerli, of course, would try again. At this point, she's in a career low. The money is running out and when not performing at Eurolaul, she's living in Sweden in an abandoned house, living off rice and sleeping on a camp bed. Better things would lie ahead, but for now Kerli is bit of a dark place.

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Eurovision 2003 - Number 28 - Kerli featuring Locatellis - "Let's Go"

2003 marks the debut of one of the National Final fan's favourites. Welcome to Kerli Kõiv, not competing at EuroLaul for her first attempt to make it, but at Melodifestivalen. Here she's paired with female rap duo Locatellis to form a cut-down, Spice Girls influenced, manufactured experience with a smattering of Spanish.

Let's Go may be a derivative and absolutely off-the-production-line party song, but it's addictive and all three of them seem to be having huge amounts of fun on stage. Interestingly the song is written in part by Jonas Liberg - the creative brain behind Latvia's 2008 Eurovision entry Wolves of the Sea

It's a calling card for Kerli (she is on the line after all) and it's certainly one that got her noticed. However the televoters of Sweden were less impressed. It came 7th out of the 8 songs in Heat 2. Not a great start, but the A&R men were watching as were the folks back home in her native Estonia.

In 2004 she entered EuroLaul and finished second with a song that pushed ever further into the public eye. Shortly after that she signed her first record deal - with Def Jam records of all record companies. Her aesthetic was indie. Skater girl at the peak years of Avril Lavigne. Her focus was then away from Estonia and Sweden and more about what her label wanted her to do - which wasn't what she wanted at all. Many singles and an album followed before she wriggled free from Island/Def Jam and got fully back in control of her music.

Her entries to Eesti Laul resumed in 2016 and was almost instantly making an impression again. I'm certain she'll be in a future top 48. For now here's one of her covers from the Island/Def Jam years - a cover of Bauhaus's She's in Parties from 2007

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Kerli + Kristjan Järvi - 21st Century Kids Reimagined (Performance at Eesti Laul Eurovision 2023)

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Eurovision 2008 - Number 4 - Iiris Vesik - "Ice-Cold Story"

In Estonia there was a TV singing talent show that'd been going since in the 1970s when Estonia was part of the Soviet Union. It was an event that only happened every two years, but when it does take place, Kaks takti ette (Two Steps Ahead) has a big influence on Estonian music.

Since Estonia became independent as the Soviet Union broke up, winners have included Hedvig Hanson, Gerli Padar, Eurovision winner and Gerli's younger brother Tanel Padar, Ewert Sundja before he gained two dragons, and Laura Põldvere. The last time it took place was in 2007 and one of the contestants was Iiris Vesik. Iiris finished third and that would be enough to launch her on a career in music, but first she had to face one of the bigger injustices of the crazy 2008 national final season.

Iiris has one of those voices and personalities that sees her compared to artists such as Björk and Kate Bush. Most especially she was compared to Kerli Kõiv. She has an expressive, compelling vocal range and delivery - and going into Eurolaul 2008, she was one of the favoured entries having so recently had success in Estonia's longest running competition for new singers.

The song she had was Ice-Cold Story by Riine Pajusaar, a quirky and exceptionally high-pitched rock entry about romance with the cold of winter and snow. It's a fairy-tale from a frost queen featuring a snowman and secrets adrift in the snowflakes. It's so Frozen even though Frozen was still five years away. You can easily imagine Elsa singing this, if only she had access to electric guitars.

Yes, Iiris struggles to hit some of the big high notes in the chorus, but her vocal clarity and commitment to a song about the cold that has an exceeding hot pulse and a range from the lowest end of her vocals to slightly above the top cannot be questioned. Iiris is the absolute star of this and her stage presence is everything.

She did make an impression. In the first round of Eurolaul 2008 she came second putting her through to the super-final. There she more than doubled her televote, but it still wasn't enough. She lost out to a group who had considerably worse vocals than her on the wave of populist push for some radio favourites.

One of the reasons I started doing this blog in the first place were the national finals of 2008 and the number of good songs that lost out in what was possibly the craziest year on record. I may go into this in more detail later, but in Estonia, Iiris and Ice-Cold Story were one of the deserving songs that missed out.

The outcome was that it took Iiris two more years for her career to really take off. Iiris made a huge impression at the Tallinn Music Festival which in turn led to invitations from a number of other music festivals across Europe and her first record deal. Her only solo album came out in 2012, but there were a number of singles and, interestingly, EPs. It was on stage where she made the biggest impression.

Iiris has also entered Estonia's national final on two more occasions, first in 2010 and then again in 2018. In 2016 she worked with Kerli to write a song that I think may be the only virtual national final performance ever with the singer in a motion-tracking suit performing live behind a screen while her avatar appeared to dance for the audience.

In 2019, Iiris formed the band Night Tapes and with that band she's been releasing and performing loads of new trip-hop adjacent music regularly including their most recent release which only came out last week (as I'm writing).

This is that most recent of singles, babygirl (like n01 else)

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[creoleprincess]

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Kerli ➤ 21st Century Kids [x]

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Kerli ➤ 21st Century Kids 

[missanthropicprinciple]

my .001 second of fame