Moscow news
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18-Mar-2007
Russia names Eurovision Representative
A decision as to who will represent Russia at this year's Eurovision Song Contest has finally been made. Serebro, a three-piece girl-band created by well-known producer Max Fadeyev, will travel to Helsinki in May with a hope to at least repeat last year's success of Dima Bilan, who was a runner-up, or, maybe, even surpass it.
However, chances are slim. First, it is unlikely that the international jury will give a representative of the same country high grades two years in a row, even though a Russian singer has never won the contest. Second, Serebro, the choice of the national jury, doesn't seem to possess a combination of 'national identity' and 'European homogeneity' that the jury is looking for, or, at least, declares that it is.
Overall, the process of selecting the national representative to the contest or even the contest itself no longer seem to attract much public attention in Russia. When the country entered the competition for the first time in 1994, general public knew very little about what kind of a contest this is and what it really means for participating artists. In fact, even a victory in the Eurovision Song Contest has rarely boosted an artist's Europe-wide popularity. Probably, some of Russian contestants really hoped to achieve international prominence with their performances at the contest, but for many, like heavyweights of Russian popsa, Alla Pugacheva and Filipp Kirkorov, it was rather a vanity factor. Incidentally, both singers' Eurovision performances back in the mid-1990s were disastrous, with Pugacheva and Kirkorov finishing 15th and 17th, respectively, two years apart from each other. As a result, the average Russian achievement at the contest plummeted, not allowing the country to enter any participant at all for two consecutive years.
A decision as to who will represent Russia at this year's Eurovision Song Contest has finally been made. Serebro, a three-piece girl-band created by well-known producer Max Fadeyev, will travel to Helsinki in May with a hope to at least repeat last year's success of Dima Bilan, who was a runner-up, or, maybe, even surpass it.
However, chances are slim. First, it is unlikely that the international jury will give a representative of the same country high grades two years in a row, even though a Russian singer has never won the contest. Second, Serebro, the choice of the national jury, doesn't seem to possess a combination of 'national identity' and 'European homogeneity' that the jury is looking for, or, at least, declares that it is.
Overall, the process of selecting the national representative to the contest or even the contest itself no longer seem to attract much public attention in Russia. When the country entered the competition for the first time in 1994, general public knew very little about what kind of a contest this is and what it really means for participating artists. In fact, even a victory in the Eurovision Song Contest has rarely boosted an artist's Europe-wide popularity. Probably, some of Russian contestants really hoped to achieve international prominence with their performances at the contest, but for many, like heavyweights of Russian popsa, Alla Pugacheva and Filipp Kirkorov, it was rather a vanity factor. Incidentally, both singers' Eurovision performances back in the mid-1990s were disastrous, with Pugacheva and Kirkorov finishing 15th and 17th, respectively, two years apart from each other. As a result, the average Russian achievement at the contest plummeted, not allowing the country to enter any participant at all for two consecutive years.
So far, it has been equally doubtful that an artist's successful performance at the Eurovision Song Contest could come as a boost to their domestic career. In all the previous years, just about all Russian entrants were already fairly well-known to domestic audiences and their successes or, more often, failures at the European contest did not have much impact on their careers. One notable exception was Yudif, Russia's first ever Eurovision participant back in 1994, who was little known domestically at that time and whose career never actually took off. However, in this respect, Serebro might set an example, as the band, which consists of one former participant of Fabrika Zvezd, a Western-format talent-finding TV show, and two more "black horses," is virtually unknown to the domestic audiences. We'll see if Fadeyev, who already has some experience of participating at Eurovision with one of his proteges, Yulya Savicheva, will be able to capitalize on Serebro's Eurovision performance.
It should be also noted that Serebro, which plans to sing an English-language song at this year's competition, actually follows the trend set in 2000 by singer Alsou. Previously, Russian participants used to sing in their native language rather than English. In fact, the improvement was noticeable, as some of domestic artists who have represented the country at Eurovision contests in the last few years, also enjoyed some sort of international popularity, like scandalous girl-duo Tatu, which got the third place in 2003. On the other hand, when Natalya Podolskaya, a singer with little international appeal, was chosen by the national jury two years ago, her result was the humiliating 15th place.
The Moscow News