The former Soviet republic of Armenia made a
very successful Eurovision debut in 2006, and following the Top 10
finish of "Without Your Love" performed by André in
Athens, this year's song is automatically qualified for the final.
Having chosen its first entry internally, this
year Armenian television chose to use a national final to select
the song that would represent them in Helsinki. The competition was
open to songwriters from all over Europe and over three nights
between February 23rd and 25th, a field of twenty potential entries
was whittled down, using two semi-finals and a final with the
eventual winner being chosen by a jury. Interestingly, while there
was also a parallel televote which had no direct say in the
selection of the entry, the public also chose the same song: Hayko
and the ballad "Anytime You Need" as its favourite.
Hayko is one of Armenia's biggest music stars.
His musical education begun at a music school run by T.Chukadjyan.
He then went on with a music college under the stewardship of
Romanos Melikyan, before going on to attend the Yerevan State
Conservatory. In 1996 Hayko participated in the "Moskva
96" ("Moscow 96") festival and was awarded the first
place. In 1997 he won the first prize at the "Big Apple"
festival in New York, USA.
In 1998 Hayko was acknowledged as the best
singer-songwriter at the "Ayo" competition and a year
later he was nominated for the best singer award in Armenia. Also
in 1999 he released his first CD called "Romances" in
which he recorded familiar Armenian urban songs. In 2002 he
was nominated for several different awards at the National Music
Show; the Best Singer, the Best Musical Project and the Best Album.
In 2003 he released a compilation DVD "The Best" and
later that year he gave his first solo concert at the famous Alex
Theatre in Glendale, California USA.
Returning home, he gave a solo performance in
Yerevan in May 2003 and recorded a DVD called "Live
Concert". Also in 2003 he recorded his first CD of his own
compositions called "Norits" ("Again"). In 2004
Hayko released a live album and he has just released his fourth
album "In One Word".
Now established as one of Armenia's most popular
and successful singers and songwriters, Hayko won the Best Singer
award at the 2003 and 2006 at the Armenian National Music
Awards.
Consequently when the list of participants for
the Armenian Eurovision selection show was announced, Hayko was
immediatly considered to be the favourite. The music for his song
"Everythime You Need" was composed by Hayko and the
lyrics were written by the famous Russian songwriter Karen
Kavaleryan, who wrote the words for "Never Let You Go",
the Russian runner-up in the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest in Athens
and previously wrote "Northern Girl", the Russian entry
in Tallinn in 2002. Karen has two bites at the cherry in this
year's contest as she also wrote the lyrics of the Belarus entry
"Work That Magic".
The song which is predominently in English,
features a chorus in Armenian, the first time the language will be
heard at the contest. Singing being chosen to represent Armenian in
Helsinki, Hayko has paid a couple of visits to other countries and
was the special guest at the first Georgian national final.
Armania was one of the three automatic finalists
that got to choose its position in the runnning order and chose to
be the second last song in the running order in the final.
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ARMENIA @ EUROVISION