The Netherlands: Joost Klein is off to Eurovision 2024!

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Dutch public broadcaster AVROTROS has revealed that Joost Klein will represent the Netherlands at the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö.

The Dutch internal selection procedure

After the submission window closed in early October, the Dutch selection committee was tasked with reviewing over 600 proposals. These 600 entries were whittled down to nine, and finally to five. In order to assess their vocal prowess and prevent a recurrence of the circumstances that led to the nation’s first non-qualification this year after eight years of successful participation in the competition, the five artists were asked to perform their songs live in front of the selection committee. His vocal and performance abilities were therefore taken into consideration when choosing the Dutch representative.

A few words about Joost Klein

Dutch rapper, composer, and former YouTuber Joost Klein was born on November 10, 1997. He is known for his songs “Scandinavian Boy”, “Wachtmuziek” and “Friesenjung“, and his albums M Van Marketing, Albino and 1983. Even though the majority of his tracks are hip-hop, he frequently incorporates electronic music elements into his performances, such as drum and bass, hardstyle, and gabber.

More details will be revealed soon.

You can listen to a sample of his work here:

 

What do you think of Joost Klein? Tell us in the comments!

Stay tuned on EurovisionFun to stay up to date on all the latest news about the world’s largest music competition!

 

Luxembourg: These are the eight finalists of Luxembourg Song Contest!

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Luxembourg will return to the Eurovision Song Contest after thirty years of absence. The Duchy returns to the contest aiming to repeat its glorious Eurovision past, counting five wins, and is now ready to compete and win for one more time.

For its return, Luxembourg has decided to host a national final in order to select its Eurovision 2024 act. Following the closing of the submission window and the end of the “castings” stage, RTL underwent an evaluation process, coming down to a longlist of around 70 songs and 50 artists.

The selection of the finalists for the televised competition was then left to an international jury. The jury evaluated the longlisted artists after three days of auditions and has now reached a decision.

Today and via “Today Radio“, RTL announced the eight finalists of “Luxembourg Song Contest“.  Hence, the finalists of the Luxembourgish national selection for Eurovision 2024 are the following:

Joel Marques

He is a 25-year-old singer from Differdange and previously worked as a teacher.

This year he made it to the Battles of The Voice of Germany. On 8 December, he released his first single with the title “Stranger”.

https://twitter.com/rtleurovision/status/1734096246040670269

Naomi Ayé

The student is only 15 years old, but has already made a name for herself as a singer, composer and pianist.

In 2020, she took part in the 7th season of “The Voice Kids” and reached the final in France with her interpretation of the Queen classic “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

In February 2022, the video “Turn My Back On Light”, co-financed by the Ministry of Culture, was released. In March 2022, the student, whose full name is Naomi Ayé Vajdovics Suárez, was a guest on the RTL show Live! Planet People.

https://twitter.com/rtleurovision/status/1734117060362321943

EDSUN

Edson Pires Domingos, as he is known by his real name, already has a lot of experience in the music business, having released his first EP “N.O.” in 2015. In 2016, the video for his song “Apologee” won an award at the Luxembourg Music Awards.

In 2018, he released a new EP with the release of “You Are Not Just One Thing”. A good year, as he was also named Artist of the Year at the Luxembourg Music Awards. This was followed by a tour entitled “The Platonic Touch”.

In 2022, he released two singles: “Just Text” and “Carter”.

https://twitter.com/rtleurovision/status/1734127511787704616

Krick

Christine Heitz, 26, works as a nurse. That hasn’t stopped her from already having several great moments in the world of music. In 2014, she founded the cover band “The Daydreamer”.

In 2017, she took part in the German version of “The Voice”. The following year, her first single “Face Cake” was released!

https://twitter.com/rtleurovision/status/1734147309649191073

One Last Time

With a resolute pop-rock style, their first EP was released in 2022.

Here are the members of One Last Time:

  • Andrea Galleti – lead singer, 30 years old, works as an advertising agent
  • Jonathan Fersino – bass, 31 years old, works as advertising agent & sound engineer
  • Barbara Salvi – keyboard, 26 years old, works as a French teacher
  • Tom Sagramola – guitar, 34 years old, works as a civil servant
  • Alessandro Sorbelli (Lalo) – drums, 24 years old, is self-employed

https://twitter.com/rtleurovision/status/1734166624452915293

TALI

Real name Tali Golergant, she’s an accomplished artist despite being only 23. She wrote her first single when she was 16. She also has a band which is currently on tour in New York.

She works as a music and singing teacher.

https://twitter.com/rtleurovision/status/1734179664732553463

Angy & Rafa Ela
The duo consists of the 39 year-old Angy Sciacqua, a self-employed singer-songwriter and Rafaela Teixeira Fernandes, a 26 year-old who works for the state.

Angy took part in the 2013 edition of “The Voice Belgium” while Rafaela won “Luxembourg’s Next Popstar” in 2016, and subsequently won “Top Voice Luxembourg” in 2018.

https://twitter.com/rtleurovision/status/1734192557628829748

CHAiLD

At 25, Adriano Lopes Da Silva is a singer and songwriter, who has been a musician for four years. He lives and works in Brussels, the world of electro-pop.

https://twitter.com/rtleurovision/status/1734207416428867880

The international jury

As it was mentioned before, the Luxembourgish line-up was decided by a five-member international jury, ensuring the greatest possible neutrality in a small country as Luxembourg. The jury consisted of the following five members, strongly associated with Eurovision:

  • Christer Björkmann, who is a Swedish producer and TV host as well as a former Eurovision participant(Sweden 1992). Björkmann has also served as a Head of Delegation for Sweden, has produced the 2013 and 2016 editions of Eurovision Song Contest held in Sweden and the only and only to date American Song Contest.
  • Jan Bors, who has served as a Head of Delegation for Czechia.
  • Cesár Sampson, who has represented Austria in the 2018 edition of Εurovision and was crowned as the jury winner. Sampson will also play an active role in the Czech preselection this year, serving as an artistic director and the presenter of the national final.
  • Alex Panayi, who is also considered as a Eurovision expert. Panayi has represented Cyprus in Eurovision on two occasions, in 1995 and 2000. In recent years, he has served as a vocal coach for several Eurovision participants and was also the backing vocalist of the 2005 winner, Helena Paparizou.
  • Tali Eshkoli, which an Israeli television producer. Eshkoli has been the producer of the 2019 edition of Eurovision, has also contributed to the 2021 edition of the Miss Universe competition held in Israel and has served as a jury member in various Eurovision preselections.

The Luxembourgish national final

The Luxembourgish national final will take place on January 27, 2024 in a major live show broadcast on RTL Télé. Viewers will be able to vote for the person they want to see represent Luxembourg at the Eurovision Song Contest 2024 in Malmö. More details are expected soon.

Stay tuned to EurovisionFun for all news!

Source: RTL

Greece: Marina Satti has listened to many songs and rejected all of them!

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According to the reposrtage on SKAI channel’s show, “Geia Sou”, the journalist Katerina Theodoropoulou, revealed that Marina Satti has already listened to a major part of the 150 songs submitted to ERT for the Greek representation in Eurovision 2024, and has rejected all of them. Read more

EBU: Israel’s public broadcaster complies with the rules of Eurovision 2024!

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In a public statement to the Belgian newspaper HLN, the EBU comments on its announcement regarding the list of 37 competing countries in Eurovision 2024, with the inclusion of Israel in this list.

The announcement of the list with the 37 competing nations of the 68th Eurovision Song Contest by EBU a few days ago, was a matter of controversy on the social media, since a part of the eurofans considered that Israel should have been disqualified from the upcoming contest.

In fact, there were not a few who compared the case of Russia with that of Israel, accusing the EBU of having double standards in similar cases.

Responding to a relevant question from the Belgian newspaper HLN, the EBU comments that the list of countries that are going to compete in Eurovision 2024 has been approved by the relevant bodies of the association, while regarding Israel it replies that its participation is given, since its public television fully comlies with the competition regulations.

“The EBU’s governing bodies […] reviewed the list of participants and decided that the Israeli public broadcaster complies with all competition rules”

The EBU’s decision is reasonable at this time. It is worth reminding that the case of Russia and Belarus’ disualification are two completely different cases. Russia’s public television was expelled by the EBU due to its use by the Russian government as a propaganda tool in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, violating its territorial integrity. As far as Belarus is conserned, a temporary exclusion from the competition and from the EBU for three years was decided, as a penalty for the attempt of the country’s public television to politicize Eurovision 2021, by sending an entry with clear political lyrics.

The case of Israel has nothing to do with the above, since the war conflict did not start with its own fault on the one hand and on the other hand its war response came as a result of the terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7th.

Since the question around Israel’s inclusion in the upcoming contest was solved, the only thing pending now is whether Romania will manage to be present in Malmö, in May, raising the number of the participating countries to 38.

Stay tuned on Eurovisionfun for all the updates around the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest!

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Switzerland: Five Artists To Represent the Country!

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One of the founding members of Eurovision Song Contest, Switzerland, chooses its representatives through an internal selection with multiple stages until the final result since 2019. This is how it happens for Eurovision 2024 as well, while the submission procedure opened on August the 10th and closed on August the 24th for all those various artists who wish to reperesent Switzerland at Eurovision.

More specifically, at the very first stages of the selection procedure, there is a Swiss jury who have already listened to all the submitted songs and have gradually ended up to a list with less and less entries. At the later stages, there is also an audience jury which includes both Swiss and international juries’ members, who have participate at the past either as juries’ members or even not.

Thus, according to Jean Marc Richard from RTS Switzerland, some details have been released for the Swiss Internal Selection, which are the following:

  • Almost 420 songs were submitted to represent the country.
  • On December the 5th, the five final artists recorded their songs at the SRF Studios in Zurich.
  • The juries of professionals and the international audience jury will listen to the final five songs, while the final decision will be taken at the beginning of the new year.
  • The song for Eurovision 2024 will be released in March of 2024.
  • It is rumored that among the final five artists former representatives of the recent years are not included.

Until then, take a look at Switzerland’s entry for Eurovision 2023, “Watergun”, performed by Remo Forrer, which ended up in the 20th place at the Grand Final:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4NDErv49mk

Source: https://escbeat.com/

Stay tuned to Eurovisionfun for even more news!

Spain: Βenidorm Fest 2024 is now dealing with a mass entries’ leak | The RTVE reaction!

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Following the announcement of the 2024 Benidorm Fest line-up about a month ago, and the official release of the participating entries on December 14, RTVE is now dealing with a mass entry leak on X (former Twitter).

The leakage of the entries’ titles a few days ago was only the beginning; now, all but three entries have been leaked on social media. It all started on X, where several Benidorm Fest fans claimed to have already listened to the songs and were exchanging their thoughts on what they had heard.

It didn’t take long for users to start sharing the snippets -or full songs- via WhatsApp and, later, X, as the situation quickly spiraled out of control. In fact, Spanish fans are asking RTVE to release all of the songs as soon as possible in order to put an end to this saga.

RTVE’s reaction

The Benidorm Fest organizing committee and RTVE did not remain silent. They made it clear in a tweet that are even willing to take legal action against those who leaked the entries.

After what happened in the last few hours, RTVE’s legal services are collecting all the information to take legal actions that they consider appropriate to defend the interests of artists and the Corporation. Thanks for your cooperation. We keep working. See you on the 14th.

Benidorm Fest 2024

Despite this ongoing chaos, RTVE is expected to release the Benidorm Fest’s 2024 entries on December 14. Benidorm Fest 2024 will include two semifinals of eight on January 30 and February 1, 2024 as well as a Grand Final with eight competing acts on February 3.

The winner of Benidorm Fest 2023 and therefore the Spanish representative at Eurovision 2023 was Blanca Paloma with her song “Eaea”, which although being a favorite, finished in the 17th place.

https://youtu.be/Vw6qPWhjevk

Stay tuned to EurovisionFun for all news!

Kim Cesarion: “We’ve been having talks the years before, but it felt right this time.” | Exclusive Interview

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As you had read in one of our past articles, the final list of Melodifestivalen participants was published on the 1st of December, at a press conference hosted by SVT at their headquarters in Stockholm.

Andreas Papayiannakis and EurovisionFun was at SVT/TV-huset, in Oxenstiernsgatan 34, Stockholm, accredited to cover the artist reveal event that the Swedish national broadcaster had been preparing for media over the last few months.

There we had the chance to meet several of the participants, among which was Kim Cesarion, who will participate on the 3rd Heat, on Saturday 17 February 2024, at Vida Arena, in Växjö, Sweden.

Kim has already done his international breakthrough with the song “Undressed“, but why did he decide to participate at Melodifestivalen and why now? He responded:

“I would say why not? It is something that is very huge in Sweden and obviously all over Europe. We’ve been having talks the years before but it didn’t feel right for me at the time. But I follow my guts with a lot of things in my life and it felt right this time. So that is why now!”

Cesarion was one of the writers of his song titled “Take my breath away“. But what was the thinkling behind the song?

“Will you be back here? Then we will talk about it more *laughs*! I’m keeping the song and the performance a little bit closed so we will have more to talk about. It’s a song that I hope will connect with the fans of Eurovision and also with my supporters that I had since before. It’s kind of a blend of Melodifestivalen but also something that is Kim Cesarion, like the music I’ve been putting out over the last 10 years.”

We asked him what are his aspirations for his participation in 2024 and Kim admitted:

“Hopefully to be able to represent Sweden at Eurovision, that would be very amazing of course.”

An unexpected moment came, when Danny Saucedo suddenly crashed our interview, said he is his favourite and then they gave each other a heartwarming hug. Kim thinks that there isn’t any of his fellow contestants that he should keep an eye on and adds:

“Melodifestivalen is more about love, like a family, it is about having a good time, enjoying ourselves and make sure whoever is watching is enjoying too. I wouldn’t say I have someone particularly that I think I should keep an eye on but I will enjoy watching other performances and see what other songs I would have to compete against of course.”

Kim Cesarion is also Greek from his mum’s side. He explains then what his connection to Greece is, besides his love for Greek lamb, Greek and Cretan food:

“I’m Greek from my mother’s side, my mum is half Swedish half Greek and my father is from Guadeloupe. But on the Greek side we are from Creta and then a lot of people moved to Athens now. I was actually there last year I celebrated Christmas there. I was also the summer of the very same year. So I haven’t been there for a year now, but I am looking forward to the next time I am going back. Cause I need my Greek lamb. I need my Greek food. I need my Cretan food. So yeah I need to be back!”

Does Kim travel to Crete only or he has been to more places in Greece?

“I travel to both Crete and Athens, so hopefully my cousin will take me to more islands when I am there. He is in music too, in Athens, Greek artist, rap music, he has friends who have studios in the islands, so I hope I can make music in Greece too! I genuinely hope to meet the fans that I have in Greece already and hopefully I will be able to make many more new fans from Greece. And they will teach me some Greek too, because I don’t speak the language. So hopefully we will have that connection!”

Who is Kim Cesarion?

Kim Hugo Leonel Niko Cesarion is a 33-year-old Swedish singer-songwriter of Guadeloupean and Greek origin. Cesarion was born in Stockholm to a Guadeloupean father and a GreekCretan/Swedish mother. Cesarion is a classically trained musician. He studied at Lilla Akademien, a highly acclaimed music school in Stockholm, and plays several instruments including the violin, piano, double bass, and viola, as well as drums. He is signed with RCA, Sony Music and Columbia. It’s been a while since he last made music and he plans on coming back to the Swedish music industry by taking part in the contest. He made his big breakthrough in 2013 with the song “Undressed” which became a worldwide hit, with over 88 million streams on Spotify and success in the Nordic countries as well as Australia, New Zealand and the United States and we remember him with his duet with Molly Hammar “Show Me“.

You can watch our exclusive interview with Kim Cesarion in the video below:

Melodifestivalen 2024 is scheduled to take place between February 3rd to March 9th, and next year’s 30 competing songs were selected by SVT among 2624 songs.

The schedule for the six shows of the Melodifestivalen 2024 tour

  • Heat 1: Saturday 3 February 2024, Malmö Arena, Malmö
  • Heat 2: Saturday 10 February 2024, Scandinavium, Göteborg
  • Heat 3: Saturday 17 February 2024, Vida Arena, Växjö
  • Heat 4: Saturday 24 February 2024, Stiga Sports Arena, Eskiltuna
  • Heat 5: Saturday 2 March 2024, Löfbergs Arena, Karlstad
  • Final: Saturday 9 March 2024, Friends Arena, Stockholm – Solna

The winner of Melodifestivalen 2023 and hence the Swedish representative at Eurovision 2023 was Loreen with her song “Tattoo“. Loreen went on to become the first female artist in history to win the Eurovision Song Contest twice.

Photo: Daniel Stridh

Stay tuned at Eurovisionfun, for all the latest developments regarding Melodifestivalen 2024 and the Swedish entry for Eurovision 2024!

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Romania: Mihai Trăistariu found a song and is now looking for a country to represent in Eurovision 2024!

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A few days ago, the EBU, published the list of countries taking place in Eurovision Song Contest 2024, and even though Romania was not present in the list, it was mentioned that coversations are still underway.

TVR, the public broadcaster of Romania, revealed that they received extra time from the EBU, in order to pay the participation fee. This means that the decision on taking part or not in the 68th Eurovision Song Contest, depends on the approval of the state budget for 2024 and the amount of money that will be allocated to the broadcaster.

Who will the representative be if Romania takes place?

Mihai Trăistariu, representative of the country in Eurovision 2006, has stated that he is interesting in returning to the Eurovision Song Contest, however, after TVR and EBU’s announcement, he went on to make some infuriated statements, having in mind that his country might not be present in the coming contest.

Even more, he revealed that he found the coveted song that is set to bring Romania back to the its successful self.

“I am extremely angry! I, since September, received a song from Finland from some producers, which I thought was brilliant and I said: that’s it, I found the song, after years of searching! And look, when I also found the song, I found out that it is possible that we will no longer participate in Eurovision! I kind of expected it! I don’t know why they can’t handle a failure. I understand that this boy got 0 points, but what does that mean, that is, if Romania does not qualify for the World Cup in soccer, we will never go again? It’s impossible, sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. It was good with me and Luminița, we had top results, so it is possible! But if we send any of these, normally we will only get 0 points! I kept screaming and shouting: stop sending unprepared, unripe children! I will also see which countries still allow foreigners, because I have the right track and I will enroll in another country if I have no choice “

The Romanian artist represented his country in the 2006 contest, with the song “Tornerò”, which ended up in 4th place and evolved into a huge success in the whole lot of Europe. He also tried to represent his country again in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 with no success.

Romania’s representative in Eurovision 2023, was Theodor Andrei, with his song “D.G.T. (Off and On)” which didn’t manage to qualify, ending up in 15th place of the second semi-final:

https://youtu.be/Bf3iPXU1RYU

Stay tuned on Eurovisionfun for all the news regarding the Romanian participation at the Eurovision Song Contest 2024, in Malmö!\

Source: protv.ro

Netherlands: The representative will be revealed on December 11!

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The wait for the announcement of the Dutch representative at Eurovision 2024 is almost over. Following an extensive internal selection, it is now confirmed that AVROTROS will announce its Eurovision 2024 participant on December 11.

The process of the Dutch internal selection

Following the closing of the submission window on early October, the Dutch selection committee had to evaluate more than 600 submissions. Those 600 submissions were shortlisted to nine and then to five. The five favorites for the Dutch representation were asked to sing their songs live in front of the selection committee in order to have their vocal abilitites evaluated and not repeat this year’s scenario, which led to the first Dutch non-qualification in eight years of a successful course.

Hence, one of the criteria under which the Dutch representative will be chosen will have to be the live vocals and performance skills.

The three potential candidates

Moreover and according to the radio station “Radio 538“, there are three candidates most likely to represent the Netherlands at the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö, all of them females. Specifically, those three artists are

  • Karsu
  • Numidia and
  • Ilse DeLange

Numidia and Karsu became famous after taking part at “Best Singers”, a musical competition in the Netherlands. Numidia’s song for Eurovision 2024 is written by a former Eurostar, Douwe Bob who represented the Netherlands  in Eurovision 2016 and according to him, had also submitted a song for himself.

Ilse DeLange is the one of “The Common Linnets” duo, that represented The Netherlands at Eurovision 2014, finishing second. Although and according to her manager, Ilse DeLangewill not be taking part at Eurovision 2024.

The Netherlands were represented at Eurovision 2023 by Mia Nicolai & Dion Cooper with their song “Burning Daylight“. Their performance did not convince the European audience, failing to qualify to the Grand Final of the competition.

Stay tuned to EurovisionFun for all news!

Source: AVROTROS

Finland: These are the hosts of UMK 2024!

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Just a while ago, Yle, the public broadcaster of Finland, revealed the hosts of Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu 2024 (UMK), the country’s national final for Eurovision Song Contest 2024!

This year UMK will have three different hosts and as it seems it will be bigger than ever, after Käärijä’s thriumph this year in Liverpool.

The three hosts were partially revealed through an Instagram post from UMK. Their names will be revealed  in Monday, howver UMK asks us to try to guessn who are they.

The post in question, is about a photo of the three hosts but with a twist. Their faces have been distorted with the help of AI, in a way that it’s difficult to guess their real identity.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by UMK (@uudenmusiikinkilpailu)

Who do you think are going to be the hosts of UMK 2024?

The previous winner of UMK and Finland’s representative in Eurovision 2023 was Käärijä with his song “Cha Cha Cha” who ended up in second place of the Grand Final, after winning the televote:

https://youtu.be/l6rS8Dv5g-8

Stay tuned on Eurovisionfun for all the news regarding the Finnish participation at the Eurovision Song Contest 2024, in Malmö!