| The singer hoping to hear the words “Germany, 12 points” will be Gracia. After a nerve-racking final between Nicole & Marco – whose ballad was written by none other than ‘Mr. Eurovision’, Ralph Siegel – and Gracia, with her rocky number ‘Run & Hide’, it was the latter who gets to go to the final in Kiev.
But it was while Gracia, overwhelmed by the televoting results, stood in front of the screaming audience that Germany’s answer to Nipplegate nearly happened! Fortunately, the zip on her leather jacket saved her from any embarrassment, and the only scandal remained nothing more than a blush on the singer’s face.
What will be more interesting is the question of who David Brandes, the producer of Gracia’s winning song ‘Run & Hide’, will be rooting for in Kiev – because he is also the producer behind Vanilla Ninja, the all-girl quartet representing Switzerland this year. “For the sake of international diplomacy, I will stay neutral”, he explained to the TV audience.
Apart from Gracia, nine other strong finalists competed for the right to represent Germany in the Eurovision final.
There were The Murphy Brothers with the great opening song ‘Picking up the Pieces’ – featuring some incredible guitar-playing – followed by Ellen ten Damme with the anti-war song ‘Plattgeliebt’, written and composed by Udo Lindenberg, during which she showed how well her body can twist and stretch.
Königwerq sang about being ‘Unschlagbar’ (‘unbeatable’) but were proven wrong by the truly unbeatable Gracia. Nethertheless, Dania König, the band’s heavily pregnant frontwoman, had fun on stage and told us that “the baby gets nervous if I don’t sing”.
An ocean of tears were shed when Orange Blue performed their ballad, ‘A Million Teardrops’, on a stage covered with white candles and romantic lights. And there was yet another ballad to touch people’s hearts: Nicole’s and Marco’s ‘A Miracle of Love’ which was composed and written by a duo well known by all Eurovision fans: Ralph Siegel and Bernd Meinunger. Although Ralph Siegel went home empty-handed, Bernd Meinunger has good reason to smile: he is the author of ‘Run & Hide’, too.
Villaine, with a visible love for pink, shared her ‘Adrenalin’ with us and the Allee der Kosmonauten shared their belief in God. Mia Aegerter from Switzerland who plays Xenia in the German soap ‘Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten’ (‘Good Times, Bad Times’), sang about feeling ‘Alive’ on stage and proved that acting and singing can very well work together.
Last but certainly not least, Stefan Gwildis looked on the bright side of Germany’s grey weather and wrote a jazzy song about it: ‘Wunderschönes Grau’ (‘Wonderful grey’), a homage to rainy days at home that are a far cry from the blue skies of Rio, Macao and Antalya. |
