Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

Yle is going internal again in 2019 and it will be very curious to see who they choose (or get) after Saara Aalto - will they go for big international name or something big in Finland.  Or someone new and emerging? Lauri Tähkä is one of the biggest names in the Finnish music industry. He's got his own national romantic style mixing folk with pop and rock ever since he started with his group Elonkerjuu. Elonkerjuu won the Emma award as the Group of the year five years in a row when he was in it before going solo (2006-2010). Since then he has been picking up Male artist of the year in various galas. Three solo studio albums so far (#1 and two #2s, all platinum or multiplatinum sales) and a string of radio hits he would be an excellent choice. Like Pauhaava sydän  would have been fabulous back in 2007 for Eurovision.... Mä en pelkää is brand new with a lot more modern sound...

There rarely as much criticism towards something like there was for the first edition of UMK, the revamped Finnish national final. It was pretty much a flop in every possible way and it seems YLE has learned a lesson and studied well what went wrong and done the possible changes. Last year there were 40 artists online, but this year they decided to pick up the 12 semifinalists directly and giving all of them more focus. They also learned this kind of program needs more live shows and concentration on the songs and artists. This time there will be three live shows with televote and eliminations. There will be also a guest star on each show; Anssi Kela in the first one, Jesse Kaikuranta in the second and Elonkerjuu in the semifinal. But the pre-recorded shows start already December 27 followed by January 3 and 10, 2013 where we will get to know the artists and songs better. So far you can listen to snippets of the demos here .  Here are the running orders for the l...

Lauri Tähkä fired his band Elonkerjuu with an email and caused quite a stir, after all the combination had sold several platinum records and was the hottest band in country for several years. His first solo effort Syyskuun kyy (September viper) charted only 5 weeks peaking at #9 but the album went platinum in a day so maybe he's more of an album artist? I will feature in this series the five songs that have marked my year 2011, the ones that made me go ooh when they started playing on radio, the songs that I sung to myself the most in my head during the year and that still I like to listen and like the most. Simple as that