FINLAND – Finland’s Contest for New Music UMK, revealed its seven finalists today. One of them will represent Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest in Turin, Italy, in May 2022: Cyan Kicks, BESS, The Rasmus, Younghearted, Olivera, Tommi Läntinen, and Isaac Sene.
The competing UMK songs will be announced daily starting tomorrow, January 13. The songs and music videos will be available on the Finnish Broadcasting company’s streaming service Yle Areena, as well as on Youtube, Spotify, and other music streaming services at midnight on their own respective days. The winner will be chosen in the UMK final on February 26.
Isaac Sene: Kuuma jäbä
Charismatic and boundary-breaking Isaac Sene is vying for a ticket to Eurovision in Italy with his song Kuuma jäbä. Sene’s Koko kansan EP was released in 2020. The most-streamed song from the EP, Bébé, features Vesta, and the song Älä oo liian kiltissä includes Yeboyah.
Sene’s music ranges widely in style, with touches of soul, rock and hip hop, just to name a few. Growing up in the North Savo region, Sene spent his childhood listening to all kinds of music, including everything from Mozart to Bob Marley, trance to Finnish heavy metal, thus laying the foundation for his enormously eclectic style. “My music is pretty pop-oriented, but I love to mix different genres. I’ve always loved rock – the same goes for rap.”
Last year, Sene released a couple of new singles, the most well-known of which is perhaps the very personal N-sana. Even though the song has a serious, thought-provoking message, Sene’s goal is to entertain his listeners and help them escape the workaday world. This is also how he describes his UMK entry Kuuma jäbä. “You might blush a bit listening to this song, but we don’t want to just shock people for the sake of shocking,” he says.
Sene wrote the song together with producer Alvar Escartin, a.k.a. Yrjänä. Yrjänä has produced music for, among others, Finnish artists Lukas Leon and Hassan Maikal. This collaboration got its start when Yrjänä heard Sene’s song Nälkä and fell in love with it. Isaac Sene is known as a daring, charismatic performer. In other words, there’s a lot to look forward to in his show in February.
