Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

  Justice be done, Käärijä beats Loreen's Tattoo to second place with a clear margin in the annual fa voting #ESC250, the one and original one.  Cha cha cha scored 22.440 points against Tattoo's 19.446 and Loreen's previous #1 for 11 years Euphoria was almost beaten by last year's #1 SloMo, 17.986 vs. 17.913. Käärijä got 991 12s versus Loreen's 765. Käärijä has had an excellent year: more than 120 sold out gigs in Finland and an European tour. The most streamed song in Finnish ever with nearly 122 million streams on Spotify alone. Cha cha cha was also the most watched video on Eurovision.tv's Youtube channel beating again Loreen.  Cha cha cha topped the official Finnish charts for 9 weeks staying in Top-5 for 30 weeks, still at number 38 at its 48th week. In Radio play charts in was #1 for two weeks, staying in Top-5 for 16 weeks, 11 of them at #2 behind another UMK2023 act, Kuumaa's Ylivoimainen.  On Christmas Eve Yle broadcasted his summer gig in prime tim...

 Loreen. A legend for some. A one hit wonder for most. Since winning Eurovision song contest 2012 with Euphoria she has released seven singles. None of them has left the mark really. Her third attempt in Melodifestivalen this year with Statements ended up in a real defeat.  Now she's ready to finally release her second album Nude in August. The lead single is Body . It's... well, like her previous stuff. Okeyish to listen to when it's on but completely forgettable once it's finished.... Pretendious comes to mind. But then maybe I just don't get her. Maybe I never did. Her fans are surely euphoric. Maybe.  Listen in Spotify

I had a pleasure to visit Qormi wine festival and spend a fabulous night. The food was great, the music was great, the wine was great.... and the people were amazing. In between enjoying the music by a duo Gianni & Papps first, and then by Spiteri Lucas Band with singers Kaya, Neville Refalo, Ivan and Eurovision veterans Ludwig Galea and Chiara taking leads (on again.... off again so to speak) and supporting each other through rock and pop classics to today's hits.  Highly entertaining evening in every sense of the word. I was lucky enough to have a chat with Chiara and greet also Ludwig, who I saw last in Istanbul 2004. Chiara turned out to be the most lovable and wonderful person - check out the video of Grande amore below to see her blowing kisses just for you!    She also sung her very own Angel , but also Euphoria and Waterloo , Dancing queen .... Sadly by dear old Lumia decided not to cooperate at that point anymore :-( But after the jump yo...

Photo by Ronen Akerman Hovi Star is representing Israel in the Eurovision song contest 2016 in Stockholm fulfilling a life long dream. He become household name in Israel in 2009 after taking part in a reality TV show Star is born . He didn't win but he's been around ever since thanks to his unique persona and voice. He has continued to release songs, doing gigs and even has been dubbing a lot of Disney and is known for his interest in fashion. Doron Medalie who also wrote Israel's succesful Golden boy last year, is behind his song and tells: "This emotional ballad was written about our lives as human race, about the here and now. We are all connected in the virtual world while in real life we are disengaging from one another. The differences between human beings are getting stronger and the reality forces us to choose - shall we reconnect and help one another in real lifeor should we keep distancing ourselves and stay indifferent. Made of stars remind us that ...

Swedish online store has been featuring various celebrities in their advertising in their My life, my story campaigns. If you want to dress up like Loreen, have a look here .  She tells that even if she was born in Sweden her Moroccan berber roots mean a lot to her. It's also being close to the nature and has influenced her music, too. She uses and plays a lot with sounds, many of them coming from the nature. She feels also a bit nomad; she lives in Stockholm but spends a lot of time in Paris and London, and plans moving to New York soon.   What about her fashion sense? She says she's into hats, masculine jackets and blaisers. Her fashion icon would be early Grace Jones. Her Ellos collection if confortable yet classy with a touch of ethnic. Her new album is finally ready and will be released later this year. The first single off it is Paper l ight . 

Following the amazing covers by Amos Lee and Scott Matthew here's another (already) pop classic getting the stripped down acoustic treatment, Euphoria by Gavin Mikhail. He's a Nashville based pianist, singer-songwriter and composer. This version underlines the fact Euphoria is not only hard beats and a club anthem, underneath there's a real song. But he's not the only one having success with a this particular song. Icelandic Sverrir Bergmann and guitarist Halldór Gunnar scored a top-5 hit with it in Iceland at the same time Loreen herself was charting there. Which one do you prefer? Piano or guitar? And here's the original .

I must admit I never really cared so much of Freaky Fortune and their RiskyKidd. But this fantastic Eurovision medley changed it all. After hearing this, seeing them perform it I want to like them! Can I say their likability did #RiseUp like 200%? Enjoy this dose of fabulousness here . Running scared never sounded this good.....

After Romanian "miracle" here comes amazing Estonia. Not really. Neither this one was never among my favorites. Another mediocre heard-it-all-before song but good luck anyways. Amazing beat Super Hot Cosmos Blues band in the superfinal with 53% against 47%. This is like Charlotte Nilsson doing a washed down remix of Euphoria, isn't it? And the staging is a bit too busy, too.... Below are the jury votes. They weren't kind to Maiken and Sandra. Here are the final's first round results: 01. SHCBB (10 jury / 11940 – 10 public) – 20 points 02. Tanja (7 jury / 10580 – 9 public) – 16 points 03. Traffic (8 jury / 5433 – 7 public) – 15 points 04. Lenna (9 jury / 2941 – 5 public) – 14 points 05. Sandra Nurmsalu (2 jury / 10434 – 8 public) – 10 points 06. Norman Salumäe (5 jury / 2347 – 4 public) – 9 points 07. Brigita Murutar (1 jury / 2965 – 6 public) – 7 points 08. Kõrsikud (4 jury / 2256 – 3 public) – 7 points 09. Wilhelm (6 jury / 1525 – 1 public) – 7 p...

It is finally here. Just like last year Loreen took her time to release the official video for her winning entry, so did Emmelie De Forest for her Only teardrops . And not only time issue is similar to last year's, it seems... Now we only miss Lithuania, Serbia, Bulgaria and Sweden, I think..... Meanwhile she is already promoting Hunter and prey from her debut album as well. 

Chisu has been the most played artist in the Finnish radios in 2012. Her songs were aired a total of 23.278 times - or there were 2-3 of her songs playing somewhere all the time - and she had three big hits besides the older ones still playing: Kohtalon oma (5.107 being the 2nd most played song of the year beated only by Loreen's Euphoria , 5.574), Tie (4.588) and Kolnas pyörä . Madonna was once again the most played foreign artist followed by Bruce Springsteen, Juha Tapio, late Michael Jackson, Nickelback, Rihanna, Eppu Normaali, Jenni Vartiainen and Bon Jovi. That's for all the radio stations. If we look at only the nationwide ones, Bruce and Michael has to do way to locals Laura Närhi and Samuli Edelmann in top-10.

Linda Martin was visiting Gina Dirawi's pre-show on Tuesday and performed a rather brilliant version of Loreen's Euphoria . She should definately record it, we here in Blogilkar love it to bits! Linda has made a nice return to Malmö 2013 that she remembers quite differently from 1992: there's a mall now and sun shines! :-)

Loreen has had, ok let's say it, euphoric , year in 2012. First she won Melodifestivalen, then Eurovision, then debut album Heal followed and Euphoria has been one of the biggest hits of the year in several European countries. But she's not to stop now. While still doing gigs and prepairing for her coming trip to Japan, she's already writing and planning the next album to be released this fall. She tells in Expressen recording takes time so she's going to the studio shortly. "I want to experiment even more with the production and sounds, and that takes time. I don't want to use the existing sounds but create new ones. The lyrics will handle mostly human relationships as before, I find it very stimulating. You can't take material things with you when you die, but relationships stay with you. It inspires me, all kind of relationships. And everything that happens around me, the people I meet. So writing songs when travelling the world is just natural to ...

It must be the very first time in history an Eurovision winner is the most sold/downloaded song of the year in Finland. This happened to Loreen and Euphoria in 2012. And that's not all, Euphoria was also the second most played song in the Finnish radios in 2012. Check out the full lists here and here . It's also worth remembering she visited and performed in Finland several times durign the year....and was rumored to have a Finnish boyfriend at some point (whatever happened to that story?)

Ruslana has released a new single and video,  Це - Ей-форі-Я! or This is euphoria! EY-fori-Ya is also the tile of her latest album released in April 2012. Previously singles WOW - I'm so amazing , Sha-la-la and football inspired Davaj graj have been released. She hasn't bothered the international charts with these, but she has kept the high quality videos, wild dance moves and catchy tunes easily recognizable as Ruslana songs. Especially Sha-la-la would have deserved some air-play abroad me thinks.... So, there are two euphoric Eurovision winner ladies in Europe....

Loreen's Heal album is being released in Japan and it includes in a local fashion a few bonus tracks. Or in this case special versions of Euphoria : Single version, Acoustic guitar version and Acoustic strings version. Listen them here . The strings version is familiar from her live performances but the guitar one is something new and sounds very nice indeed!

Krisse Salminen, the crazy blond co-host of Eurovision 2007 in Helsinki won last night the Finnish Strictly come dancing aka Tanssii tähtien kanssa . One of her three final songs was reprise of paso doble to Euphoria .  She and her partner Matti Puro scored 4x10 points from the jury with this one and won the other finalist pair in each and every dance and even the televote by 57% of votes. So, the string of Eurovision related people winning this dance thing continues, more here .  Antonio Flores came second just like his husband Pekka Haavisto in the presidential election earlier this year. 

Nica and Joe of X Factor Germany fame have released a symphonic version of Loreen's Euphoria that fits nicely this Christmas season. It's almost as good as this acoustic version.... 

The times have changed. Not so many years ago we had the physical singles and charts based on them. Today the entries are not necessarily printed as singles at all (Hello, Finland?) but we have iTunes charts and it seems Loreen's Euphoria is taking over that in all over Europe and not only. Isn't it nice that you can just download an anonymous file on your computer and help creating #1s in a flash just like that? Call me old fart but I'm old school. I want to go to a store and buy the single and hold it in my hands... :-) Anyways, Euphoria  went to iTunes #1 (when writing this) at least  in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Ireland, Austria, Greece, Malta, Belgium, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia, Hungary, Portugal...  #8 in France, #15 in Australia, #22 in Italy, #52 in Poland, #158 in Mexico #169 New Zealand.... I will update this as new information emerges....