Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

   

UMK17 revelation Lauri Yrjölä has released a follow up to his Helppo elämä . He moves from easy life to "next to you" wandering around wild rosemary filled Finnish forest. Yes, it's a sweet love song and it rocks. Great stuff. 

The prevotes have been counted and Emma emerges as a clear winner. The voting was open for a month and closed earlier today and was revealed in the #umk17 pre-show online. These votes will be added to the televotes on Saturday and together they will provide 50% of the result, the rest being given by the ten international juries .  It looks like we are going to get a fine looking show on Saturday, with proper staging for the acts. Watch out especially for Gunther & D'Sanz who make it the right kind of kitch, Norma John's simple but effective drama, Emma's fireshow and Zuhlke's pole dancers.... And then there's Club La Persé.... Are you getting excited yet? I am! 1. Emma: Circle Of Light 30,4 2. My First Band: Paradise 15,0 3. Zühlke: Perfect Villain 12,5 4. Günther & D'Sanz: Love Yourself 8,4 5. Norma John: Blackbird 8,3 6. Club La Persé: My Little World 6,9 7. Alva: Arrows 5,9 8. Knucklebone Oscar & The Shangri-La Rubies:...

YLE is publishing rehearsal clips from the #UMK17 final that takes place Saturday in Metro Arena in Espoo. Have a look (and vote in my poll on the right side when you still can!) and see what to expect! Emma - Circle of light Alva - Arrows Günther & D'sanz: Love Yourself Errr.... It seems YLE has taken the videos down....??!!  :-( (5pm local time) Oh, apparently wrong version went on and will be replaced with the right ones.  Stay tuned! to be updated....

Less than a week to go and we will know who will win #UMK17 and become the Eurovision song contest entrant for Finland this year. Since the beginning there have been two major fan favorites: Emma and Norma John , two completely different approaches to the contest. One Eurovision by numbers, almost manufactured to perfection to fit the form, one the complete opposite. Curiously, these two were also this bloggers first instant favorites that have been later with further listenings joined by Lauri Yrjölä , Anni Saikku and My First Band . The others don't impress me that much to be honest. I had a little fun with the various polls on the internet, be they newspaper or fan websites or blogs oincluding my own little poll here on the blog (where you can still keep voting). All numbers are percentages. And indeed Emma and Norma John alone take the half of the votes in combined chart.  In the Finnish votes alone My First Band and Gunther & D'Sanz benefit from the huge boos...

84/120 Lauri Yrjölä scores a surprise second place in our little panel. Lauri is a singer-songwriter and guitarist. He has material enough for his debut album to be released, if everything goes well, and if he has time from playing with Isac Elliot, Sanni, Antti Tuisku and other top names, and in the bands Year of the Dog and Ottilia. But maybe it's time to step to the spotlight for real and #UMK17 is a good test for that. He's a late bloomer as he took guitar into his hand and started with music only when he entered high school.  His song is about contracts; how it is to search for easy life (aka Helppo elämä) but how it in the end gives you nothing. Being the only song in Finnish in competition he says he wants his arrangement and sound international but his lyrics in Finnish to make it more authentic, so he can truly sing them from his heart. And should he win, the song stays in Finnish! This is not his first time in UMK, he was already in Mica Ikonen's band b...

As usual YLE has been in complete silence how many entries they have received for UMK2017 and this year not even the artists - to be honest very, very few every year and usually those wannabe nobodies in search for some media coverage - have come out shouting out their intentions and how they have sent in a song that will win it. Yah right. So far there's only a handful of names that can be digged out from social medias that they may have sent in an entry, or have toyed with the idea. Let's have a look.... Katrin Johansson . I have never heard of her but her wikipedia tells all sort of things. Sounds very promising though, as you can judge yourself from her older video below... Dead Girl Diamonds is a pop rock grunge rap band from Rauma. Not so quite sure about them though.... Lauri Yrjölä is a professional guitarist playing with Isac Elliot, Sanni, Antti Tuisku and Janna and is now trying to step out as a singer-songwriter as well.  Lyel is a German bo...