On the 24th of July, the Irish Eurovision legend Johnny Logan was seen at a rare event in a Finnish rural village Degerby. The small annual festival was called Grisfest, now arranged for the 16th time by a Finnish musician Kisu (real name: Kristian Jernström), who is also a composer behind several Finnish ESC preselection tunes over the years.
The atmosphere was really warm and cozy. Johnny kept repeating how happy he is to be finally able to perform live in front of people.
New duet with Jannike
Johnny was joined on stage by a Finnish singer called Jannike (Sandström), with whom he has recently released a duet called “Just one look”. The singers worked on the song together with the producer Niklas Rosström. Jannike had contacted Johnny, and both of them recorded their parts of the song separately. Their live performance premiere took place in the German tv show Fernsehgarten earlier this year, which was particularly exciting as it was the first time they met in real life! All went well as the singers share a similar sense of humour.
Jannike, who participated in the Finnish Idols in 2008, is also a Eurovision fan ever since watching Carola perform “Fångad av en stormvind”. She has been a backing singer for many well-known artists such as Loreen, but describes the collaboration with Johnny as something truly special.
Watch the interview with Johnny Logan and Jannike
Johnny’s Eurovision classics and more
Johnny and Jannike had just performed in another location in Finland, Vaasa, a few days earlier. Now they performed a great duet of Logan’s third Eurovision winning song “Why me” (originally by Linda Martin). Of course we also heard Johnny performing his two other Eurovision winning songs, “What’s another year” and “Hold me now”. Johnny’s talents are definitely not limited to ballads, though – he performed a variety of songs of different styles with the live band.