#Euroviisut 2002

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2002 - Number 29 - Laura - "Addicted to You"

Like Spain, Finland put a lot of effort and money into Eurovision 2002. While Spain had a brand new singing competition, Finland poured money into promoting their singer, Laura Voutilainen and the song Addicted to You across Finland and Europe prior to the competition.

Laura is a big name. She'd been in the Finnish charts since the mid-1990s, scoring top 10 hits and released many other singles. She'd won the Finnish music industry Emma award for best female vocalist in both 1994 and 1996, and after releasing five albums up to 2002, she was still going strong.

In Euroviisut 2002 she won easily, topping the regional jury vote and then the televote only final by a long way from second place. Everything was set for a big result for Finland travelling just across the short distance across the Gulf of Finland in what is almost a home event. YLE had been pushing for Eurovision success for some years maybe this was the one, although not achieving it for a whole variety of reasons.

Addicted to You is a disco floor-filler. It meets all the requirements for Eurovision template. High-tempo, big vocals, well sung and full of energy. 2001 had shown that party songs and big female-front bops were what the Eurovision audience wanted, and Laura was delivering it. It even got a decent running order, pretty much at the mid-point of the competition.

It came 20th of 24 songs. I don't know why. It feels like a song that the fanbase should still be celebrating, yet it's sort of slipped out of the collective Eurovision fanbase memory. It's not in the latest songfestival.be top 500 (2022 version), and it's ranked 12th in 2002 by the ESC Discord global ranking at the time of writing. Despite all it's energy, somehow, it fails to take off.

Like the Netherlands in 2001, the effort, promotion and investment of a broadcaster failed and instead of a national celebration, relegation was the result. Finland and YLE had been truly trying hard with their national final and yet, here they are, relegated again. Laura did not deserve this outcome at all. She tried to qualify again in 2007 but fell short. Her music career luckily wasn't affected by this and she has still be releasing music all the way up to the 2020s. Her last album (her 14th) was out in 2019, with other music published more recently than that.

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2002 - Number 39 - Taina Kokkonen - "Silenzio"

Until I researched this song I had no idea that Finland was the home of the world's oldest tango festival. The Seinäjoki Tangomarkkinat has been occurring in Seinäjoki every summer since 1985 after the director of the floundering local classical music festival came up with a new idea to save the event while in a sauna. Each year the festival crowns a new Tango King and Queen and you are listening to the Tango Queen of 1999, Taina Kokkonen. None of this explains why she's singing in Italian in a heavy Finnish accent.

In 2002 Taina is an established pop singer with several hits and two studio albums already, that and her status as royalty in the Finnish tango world have led her here to Euroviisut 2002 for her only attempt to enter Eurovision. The Italian is because not only does Taina speak Italian, she has worked on Italian TV and was keen to take advantage of the new language rules meaning she could sing in any language she liked. As Italy themselves are still not playing ball and can't vote it's good to have something Italian in the mix. If she'd made it through to Eurovision, at least the Swiss Italian speakers would have been on board.

However Taina and Silenzio (Silence) didn't make it through. It didn't even make it to the Euroviisut final, finishing 11th of the 12 songs in the first round. Perhaps Italian wasn't such a great idea in Finland? It's a power-pop song delivered perhaps without the authority that such a song demands. It's a bit of a blast from the Euroviisut past, not necessarily a bad thing but given the experimentation that's been going on in Euroviisut for the past few years, this wasn't what Finland was looking for, however timeless it might be.

The experience was not a good one for Taina. She quit her singing career later the same year, meaning this (and the Finnish language version of it) was her last single release. She moved into stage productions and musical theatre and eventually trained as a teacher.

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2006 - Number 3 - Lordi - "Hard Rock Hallelujah"

What else is there to say about Hard Rock Hallelujah that hasn't already been said? The barrier-breaking, template-busting power-metal anthem featuring demons and ghouls shrieking about hell and probably as many fireworks on stage at one time as had been used in all of Eurovision history to this point. The classic winner that always features in any video on YouTube explaining to Eurovision novices exactly what Eurovision is.

Everyone knows it, and everyone one knows Lordi.

The band had been slowly, painstakingly assembled by Mr. Lordi (Tomi Petteri Putaansuu) over a decade, starting with him as a solo act in 1992. Members were recruited, left, returned and the aesthetic developed until at the end of 2002, in Helsinki, Lordi as we know them gave their first stage performance. They toured Finland and Germany, and their reputation grew. Shortly before Euroviisut 2006, they had more line-up changes. The line-up you see on stage at Eurovision had only been together for a few months.

Hard Rock Hallelujah nearly didn't make it to the final. In the heats, each band had two songs that went up against each other. Lordi's other song was Bringing Back the Balls to Rock which only lost out on a televote 58% to 42%. Having said that, once Lordi got to the semi-final and final, the televote decisively swung in their favour. There was never really much doubt that they'd be Finland's representative.

Going into the contest, Finland and Lordi were not favourites. Not even in the top ten of the odds. They had to get through the semi-final and that's where they introduced Eurovision not only to hard rock and metal but also a new concept in staging (for Eurovision) - spectacle. There had been great staging before, but never anything like this. The costumes, the make-up, the pyro, the demonic wings, the top hat. It was attention-grabbing in the extreme and it crushed the semi-final, finishing top with 292 points.

In the final, they were eagerly anticipated. When asked what changes they'd make to their final performance, Mr Lordi said:

We'll scream louder, and turn the amps up

In the end he wore an iconic Finnish flag top hat and proved that with a performance that amazing, seeing the same thing twice isn't a bad thing. 292 points exactly again in the final, and an even bigger margin to second place.

Lordi are the band that not only brought rock and metal to Eurovision, not only the band that blew the entire concept of Eurovision wide open to all sorts of acts and musicians, broke the pop meta, but perhaps most importantly, showed that emphasising what the audience sees on stage is perhaps the most important element of any Eurovision performance. From this point forward how a song is going to be staged would be as talked about as the song itself.

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2004 - Number 38 - Mira - "Reason"

In contrast to Dan Lăzărică, Mira is not a singer that I thought I'd seen before or since at a national final. Given her mononym making researching her slightly more tricky, that thought took a while to dispel. But I have seen her before. In fact she's been in my top lists previously. Sort of. She was in the stacked Finnish national final Euroviisut 2000.

Mira Hillberg and her sister made up the band Sisterhood who I put in my more interesting entries compilation for 2000. If I'd been doing top 64s for the year, they'd have snuck in too. Mira had a short pop career in the mid 1990s, releasing a couple of albums and ten singles from 1993 onwards. She's also appeared as a backing singer for Nylon Beat.

Reason therefore comes towards the end of a ten-year career for Mira seeking mainstream pop success. It's a gentle pop song about looking for a way forward. Apt. It's largely drama-free, melodic, easy pop for sunny days. There're some synth strings in the bridge to try to give it more oomph, but oomph isn't what this song wants to have. It wants you to be calm. In that it succeeds.

It was written by Jussi-Pekka (J-P.) Järvinen who had written one other song for the Finnish national final - in 2002 for Shiedi - who was also backed by Mira. J-P. then got lucky in 2005 and ended up writing the lyrics for Russia's Eurovision entry that year.

Alas for Mira and J-P., Reason as a little too unchallenging for Euroviisut 2004. It came tenth and last in its semi-final, putting an end to Mira's Eurovision dreams for good. Somehow though, this little doodle of a song about leaving the past behind and changing your life wormed its way into my memory and refused to leave. That chorus, soothing as it is has some secret hooks in it. You have been warned.