Self-made performer to represent Russia at Eurovision-2010

10 March 2010, 10:38

(Kazan, March 10, Tatar-inform). Russians have chosen a performer to represent their country at the Eurovision-2010 contest in Norway later this year.

The winner’s name is Pyotr Nalich Musical Band that performs alternative music. The group and its song about unshared love “Lost & Forgotten” won Sunday night in the live-on-the-air national elimination round of Eurovision, Itar-Tass reveals.

Nalich’s improvised video clip “Guitar” that was filmed on an amateur camera got wild popularity in YouTube. A witty and joyful song in English pronounced with a deliberately exaggerated Western Slavic accent brought millions of clicks to its author.

So Russia will be represented this year by a musical piece that clearly falls out of Eurovision’s stereotypes and the Internet played the most decisive role in convincing the audiences to make this choice.

A total of twenty-five competitors got to the national qualification round of the contest and the audiences had an opportunity to send in their votes by telephone calls or text. The melancholically sounding Lost & Forgotten got a record 20.9 scores (an averaged arithmetic computation of the votes of TV audiences and professional panelists). It left all others far behind.
Russia 1 Channel that organized the elimination round this year, obviously set itself a goal of presenting as broad an assortment of genres, performing styles and even countries of origin as possible. For instances, the Italian Antonello Carozza and the Latvian performer Jay Stever were among the entrees competing for the right to represent Russia in Oslo.

Eurovision-2010 will be held in Baerum, a suburb of Oslo, with representatives of 42 countries expected to perform.

*Sh