SPAIN 🇪🇸
Spain: Diana Navarro sets sights on Eurovision 2020, Edurne rules out a return to the contest and Maria Isabel revealed she had two offers from TVE for a Eurovision participation.
CYPRUS 🇨🇾
Speaking to Greek media, Vangelis Kakouriotis, promising upcoming pop star in Greece with huge fan base revealed he would be interested to grab any Eurovision opportunity if occurs at the right moment with the right song. He recently performed at MAD VMA with Luca Hänni sparkling rumours for 2020 participation via Cyprus (presumably)
GERMANY 🇩🇪
“The Masked Singer” is a reality singing competition that originated in South Korea under the name “King of Mask Singer”. The format involves celebrities singing while dressed in elaborate costumes in order to conceal their true identity. Every week the audience gets to vote for their favourite. Afterwards, the celebrity with the least votes has to leave the competition and reveal their identity. The first week already made a connection to Eurovision. After it was announced that the “Octopus” received the lowest amount of votes, Lucy Diakovskia, an ex member of the No Angels, was revealed as the singer behind the mask. The No Angels competed for Germany at Eurovision 2008 with their song “Disappear” and placed 23rd out of 25 with a total of 14 points. Already in the first week, the “Astronaut” established himself as one of the fan-favourites. Serving an over the top costume, stellar stage presence and amazing vocals, he made it all the way to the finale. Nevertheless, we still don’t know his identity and fans have been speculating since day one. A lot of different celebrities have been named but one name keeps popping up again and again: Max Mutzke. Generally, people see a lot of similarities in their voices and style of singing, especially in the high notes. (source: http://www.escxtra.com)
SPAIN 🇪🇸
Encarna and Toñi Salazar, members of the Azúcar Moreno group, were recently featured in La 1’s Lazos de Sangre program, where they recalled their participation in the 1990 Eurovision Festival, where they finished 5th with ‘Bandido ‘. “Eurovision was everything to us because it opened a giant door for us,” said Toñi Salazar, with host Luis Cobos describing the song as “traditional, well cooked and very well built.”
ITALY 🇮🇹 vs. THE NETHERLANDS 🇳🇱
Within two months Mahmood’s Soldi surpasses Duncan Laurence’s Arcade. Not good news for this year’s Dutch win, Arcade, which comes just two months after its Eurovision win, falls to second place on YouTube on the official competition channel, behind Soldi, Italy. Although Soldi was shortlisted for Eurovision 2019 a couple of months ago in Tel Aviv two months ago, it has since become the most-heard Italian song on Spotify, having won platinum albums in over ten different countries and was also featured on many charts. more. Another success Soldi made was revealed today. Every month on the official Eurovision YouTube channel, the ten most-viewed contest videos are posted. Never before had a winning song fallen from the spotlight just two months after its victory. It is noteworthy that despite the great success of Eleni Fouriera’s Fuego, she remains steadily every month behind Netta’s Toy, which was also the winner of last year’s competition.
SLOVENIA 🇸🇮
RTVSLO has launched EMA FREŠ, an online side project-selection, according which all submitted entries will be published on the RTV website and social media accounts, in order for all visitors to cast their vote for their favourite song daily, while the winners will be proceeding to an end of week vote-off. The winner of the competition will win a spot in the main national selection contest. Interested young composers have a period up to 19th September to submit their music creations. The same time the submission window for the main national selection event, EMA 2020, has opened and all composers can send in their proposals through the official EMA website until 18th November.
NORWAY 🇳🇴
Norwegian national selection, MGP 2020, will take place throughout six shows. Five semi finals as of January 11th will end up to the grand final on February 15th. Despite initial releases that wanted 40 songs to compete in the five semifinals, only 20 will eventually have the chance to compete. Only two songs from each semifinal will qualify for the final, one from the audience and one from the jury. Each of the semifinals will compete four songs, while the MGP final will reach ten. Over 500 songs have already been submitted, according to Stig Karlsen, though they are seeking more quality than quantity.
ITALY 🇮🇹
A new meeting took place in Rome on Tuesday between the board of the Italian public television, RAI and the most important people in the domestic music industry, to review of the next Sanremo song festival, which closes this year with 70 years of life! Sanremo 2020 will take place at Teatro Ariston from February 4 to February 8. At the new meeting, RAI President Fabrizio Salini emphasized the importance of the next event, which is also commemorative, because of Sanremo’s 70 years of life. Topics discussed were the strategy towards the young audience, voting change. The finalists will be selected after the issues have been settled, especially in terms of how the new artistic director is voted and appointed. Salini said there have been many proposals in this regard and that they will all be considered in the new meetings that will take place until February, where the 70th Sanremo Song Festival will take place. Italy has not yet announced whether it will choose its next representative at the Eurovision Song Contest, though this is the most likely.
