When Finland’s Eurovision stars Darude and Sebastian Rejman arrived to Tel Aviv, they had already toured around the Europe in various ESC pre-parties: in Madrid, Amsterdam and London.
Yle has interviewed one of the busy guys, the singer Sebastian inbetween their rehearsals. According to Sebastian, the Eurovision phenomenon feels like “a big love bubble” to him.
“I have previously thought of Eurovision Song Contest as an event which you watch on TV once a year. But there are many fans, who live in the Eurovision world year round. I’ve been lucky to enter this bubble. And when I’ve met the artists from other countries, this feels more like a music festival than a song contest.”
Sebastian never really said ‘yes’ to Darude’s offer
Sebastian was a rather natural choice for Darude’s vocalist, as they have worked together for a few years, touring and writing songs. Darude started to persuade his friend to join him as a Eurovision candidate. So, Sebastian received uplifting videos from Darude, of partying people during their Weekend Festival performances. Sebastian can’t remember ever giving an official affirmative reply to Darude.
“I found myself sitting at the Yle studios for video filming and thought that there’s no chance of escaping now.”
Watch a brand new documentary Don’t Look Away about the duo’s journey to Eurovision Song Contest.
“Look away” was born on a trip to India – listen to the acoustic version
The Finnish entry “Look away” is originally written by Sebastian. He and Darude completed the final version together. The song was born on their trip to India where people’s poverty and misery affected Rejman deeply. After coming back home, the song, both music and text were born in less than 30 minutes – as a therapy, as he says.
Sebastian Rejman knows what he sings about in the song, but for the listener, the song is open to interpretations. The lyrics and stage performance can represent problems in personal life as well as environmental changes and “the Mother Nature in trouble”. One of the global threats is the lack of clean water. Darude and Rejman are taking part in a UNICEF campaign for providing clean water in conflict areas.
Darude and Sebastian Rejman also worked on a new, acoustic version of the song in Tel Aviv. They recorded a session with their backing singers Heini Ikonen, Matti Leino and Petri Somer. Also their dancer Etel Röhr – who we will see on the Eurovision stage – took part in the session. If you listen very carefully, you can also hear Darude singing!
Watch an acoustic version of “Look away”, recorded in Tel Aviv:
Darude has remixed the Austrian entry “Limits”!
As a very cool example of cross-national collaboration, Darude has surprised us all by remixing one of his competing entries, the Austrian song “Limits” by PÆNDA. The whole song sounds very refreshingly different with Darude’s synthpop treatment.
Team behind the Finnish entry “Look away”:
- Stage choreography: Reija Wäre
- Dancer: Etel Röhr
- Costumier: Jouni Mervas
- Backing singers: Heini Ikonen, Matti Leino, Petri Somer
- Stage show: Visual45 (Ossi Luoto, Eero Helle, Mikko Linnavuori)
- Scenery designer: Sanna-Mari Pirkola
- Camera control: Juha-Matti Valtonen
- Producer: Anssi Autio
Filming of the underwater dance in a swim hall in Helsinki: