Spain's glory days at the Eurovision Song
Contest and now almost forty years ago, when they won the contest
in 1968 and then hosted in 1969 and shared victory with three other
countries. You have to go back to 1995 for the last time that Spain
finished in the Top 5 and for the last two years, they have
finished in the bottom five.
This year
Spanish broadcaster TVE decided on a new method of selecting its
entrants for Helsinki called "Mision Eurovision". One
competition was staged for songs and a separate one for performers.
The demo versions of ten songs were put on the internet, and people
voted for their favourites, with the best five going through to the
final. Separatly a weekly contest was staged to select the best
five acts.
On February 24th, the five acts
each performed half of the five songs, before the public chose the
five combinations they liked best, and these were then performed in
full. In the end regional voting decided the winners and the
boyband Nash got the ticket to Helsinki with the song "I Love
You Mi Vida". After being chosen the band modified their name
to d'Nash after it was discoverd that the original name had been
registered by a different group.
The boyband came
together in 2005 and released their debut album "Capaz de
Todo" (Capable of Everything) in March 2006. Four singles were
released from the album and achieved significant airplay, and the
album reached #23 on the Spanish chart. The album was later
re-released with a couple of bonus tracks, incluuding a Christmas
song.
The four members of d'Nash are Mikel (Michael
Hennet Sotomayor) born in Tenerife in 1983 who is a graduate in
audio-visual communication, actor, model and salsa dancing teacher.
Basty (Esteban Piñero Camacho) was born in Cadiz in 1981 and has
been on the stage since he was a child. He has travelled across
Spain performing as soloist with the band. Javi (Francisco Javier
Álvarez Colinet) was born in Seville in 1983 is the joker of the
group and has always connected with the music, he has sung soul in
choirs and was previously a dancer. Ony (Antonio Martos Ortiz) was
born in Valencia in 1981. He was considered to be the outstanding
singer from the school choir, he has played in musical theatres. He
has also been cinema actor and hip-hop teacher.
While
the performers of this year's Spanish entry are relative newcomers,
one of the four songwriters is an old hand. For Swede Thomas G;son,
this will be his fouth Eurovision participation. Thomas was born in
Skovde on February 25th 1968. He started his career as a guitarist
and composer in the hard-rock band Masquerade who released for
albums between 1992 and 2004. However it's as a festival songwriter
that Thomas is best known. He has had 21 songs chosen for the
Swedish Eurovision selections and five for Norway's. He has also
been in the final of the Eurovision selections in Finland, Latvia,
Romania and Spain.
He first qualified for
Eurovision in 2001 when his song "Listen To Your
Heatbeat" finished fifth. Last year his song
"Invincible" sung by Carola, also finished 5th in Athens.
This year Thomas G;son is responsible for two of the entries in the
contest, as well as Spain's song, he is also one of the composers
of the Norwegian entry. Away from Eurovision Thomas G;son has had
over two hundred of his songs recorded by some of the most famous
singers in Scandinavia.
Thomas's co-composer is
fellow Swede Andreas Rickstrand who has had several hits for bands
like A*Teens and has also been involved in songs for both the
Swedish and Norwegian Eurovision selections. Lyricists Tony
Sanchez-Ohlsson, Rebeca Pous del Toro are Eurovision newcomers,
Rebeca being the only one of the songwriters based in Spain.
With
limited promotion and what is considered to be the worst position
in the running order, the Spanish entry is not considered to be a
serious contender by the bookmakers, although the song has hit the
Top 10 in several internet polls.
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SPAIN @ EUROVISION