Finland hold the second of three heats on Saturday night to find their Eurovision entry. And the six songs below will compete for three spaces in the Finnish national final.
Last week’s heat (featuring these six tracks), resulted in Eini, Saara Aalto, and Stella Christine heading to the final.
Here are the six songs hoping to join them;
Attention 2 – Ready For The Show
(Henna Helasvuo, Lasse Turunen)
Bouncy tween pop from a couple of twins who have previously represented Finland at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. It’s utterly poptastic, but unfortunately it veers towards the HUGELY ANNOYING side of the genre. And that’s before the inevitable sight of the two of them bouncing around the stage. Maybe it’s the hangover speaking – but no.
Cristal Snow – Love Is Blind
(Cristal Snow, Jimi Constantine, Samuel Kovanko)
“Yeah you look like Jesus, but you taste like sin”. Yep – an actual lyric in this song. A song which is cheesy as fuck, but in an almost epic way. Don’t even try to get past the lyrics in order to enjoy the stonking great melody – just drink it all in, as it was intended. Wow. The very definition of a guilty pleasure that is so bad it’s good. We featured Cristal quite a lot on here half a decade ago, and he’s since retired from pop somewhat to go into comedy and TV work. It’s great to have him back on our pages though, and we’d love to see him progress to the final with this.
Annica Milán & Kimmo Blom – Good Enough
(Michael James Down, Primoz Poglajen, Jonas Gladnikoff, Matthew Ker, Niklas Hast)
The second song of the week that gives off a hearty whiff of cheese on an epic scale. ‘Good Enough’ is probably finer tuned than ‘Love Is Blind’, though both songs find themselves with strong melodies that suffer from being let down by awkward lyrics. It’s off-putting to us, but hopefully won’t distract the voters too much on Saturday, when paired with what will probably be a striking performance. It sounds to us like a good finalist.
Rafaela Truda – Rise Up
(Kalle Mäkipelto, Olli-Matti Kalliosaari, Rafaela Truda)
And while the previous two songs can boast good melodies, this song struggles to find one. ‘Rise Up’ is a Eurovision national final version of an Ariana Grande hit – a sax-y production and a sassy vocal delivery. Those elements are enough to make this one of our favourites of the week – though we just wish it was that little bit catchier.
Ylona – Blazing Fire
(Tero Kaikkonen, Jaakko Salovaara, Ylona)
Our favourite of the week. A dancepop gem with one of Finland’s biggest dance producers on board (JS16 – who was behind Finnish international hits by Darude and Bomfunk MCs). It’s not exactly remarkable, and probably wouldn’t be a guaranteed Eurovision finalist for Finland by any stretch. But it’s a token Scandipop track and so we’re repping it. Not stanning for it. But definitely repping it.
Mikael Saari – On It Goes
(Mikael Saari, Kai Poutanen)
This chap has the biggest domestic profile of the six artists this week, and the best past form in UMK (he’s previously finished runner-up, to Krista Siegfrids in 2013). And so he’s probably the favourite to qualify on that alone. The song is a fairly dull affair unfortunately, despite Mikael clearly throwing everything at it during the final minute.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Our three favoured choices for progression to the final? That’ll be Ylona, Rafaela Truda, and Cristal Snow. Though we’d also sacrifice one of those for a Annica Milán & Kimmo Blom place in the final too.
