BELGIUM – Tonight the Flemish national broadcaster announced the 2020 ESC entry and no less than popular band Hooverphonic will represent Belgium next year in Rotterdam! The song selection will take place at a later time. Band member, Alex Callier wrote the 2018 Eurovision entry for Sennek, A MATTER OF TIME, which didn’t qualify in the Grand Final, in Portugal.
Hooverphonic is a Belgian band that formed in October 1995. Though originally categorized as a trip-hop group, they quickly expanded their sound to the point where they could no longer be described as a lone genre, but rather encompass alternative, electronica, electropop, rock, and a mixture of others. The band originally called themselves Hoover, but later changed their name to Hooverphonic after discovering other groups were already using the Hoover name and to avoid any legal issues with the vacuum cleaner company.
On 10 October 2008, Geike Arnaert, the lead singer of the band, announced she would leave the group by the end of the year to pursue her solo career. Arnaert had been working on solo material for a few months. The last concert Hooverphonic did with Geike was on 13 December 2008 in Tele-Club, Ekaterinburg, Russia. It was filmed by the local MTV station and was shown on Russian TV in 2009.
On 29 October 2010, Hooverphonic announced a new single on their website. The music video showcased fourteen possible singers but only one of them, Noémie Wolfs, proved to be the real successor to Geike Arnaert. On 4 November 2010, the new singer was announced on De Laatste Show at the VRT, the Flemish public broadcaster.
On 26 March 2015, Hooverphonic announced that Noémie Wolfs would be leaving the band “in mutual agreement”. In April 2018, Hooverphonic introduced their new singer Luka Cruysberghs who won in 2017 The Voice van Vlaanderen.
The band is kicking off a European tour in Czech Republic on 4th October but travelling many other countries like Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Israel and Greece where they will be performing on 14th December in Fuzz live music Club in Athens (one day before their gig in Thessaloniki).
