Spain is still picking up the pieces after Europe gave Edurne the cold shoulder during the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest. “Amanecer” composer Peter Böstrom was quick to react to the disappointing result, leaping to Edurne’s defence and turning criticism on TVE.
In a Facebook post on Sunday morning, he wrote:
I am proud of Edurne and what SHE brought to Thomas, Tony and my song. She really made Amanecer her own. I am, however (and I will probably regret saying this) NOT happy with the Spanish television company and its way of conducting business and relations. If you take a step back and look at this you’ll find that listening is the way to success. Don’t choke the [talented] artists and authors in your country, work WITH them and you will find success eventually.
He and his fellow songwriters apparently received some backlash from this message, prompting Böstrom to release another statement:
The message posted the other day are my words and my words alone. None of the other songwriters should be held responsible for my opinions. Please respect this. I believe in human errors. I made some. So did other people. But who is to blame for the result? Someone? Everyone? Anyone? The important thing is to evaluate the result, and you will spot your errors. Understand them and make sure not to repeat them. If you find a way to avoid them, you will come out stronger, wiser and closer to perfection.
Publicity is points people! Edurne cancelled a scheduled appearance at Eurovision in Concert under mysterious circumstances in the spring and promotion was limited to a publicity circuit in Spain prior to her arrival in Vienna. Let’s not forget: People in Spain cannot vote for Spain at Eurovision!
It’s such a shame that TVE didn’t unleash the Tigress on Europe and let her get her claws into more fans hearts.
Böstrom has a strong Eurovision pedigree, with credits for Eric Saade, Loreen and Danny Saucedo amongst others, so maybe TVE should take notice.
What do you think? Was a lack of publicity the reason the sun set on “Amanecer”?
And the production team behind the song.
@Chris, so it wasn’t really necessary to bring up the issue of diaspora voting, considering not only Romania benefits from it. That just shows even more that the downfall of Spain was down to Edurne herself.
@ John
I didnt say that only Romania benefits from diaspora voting. Personally, I like their song. I was just responding to the other message about Romania, which suggested that this country didnt benefit from diaspora voting, which is untrue. And I also named Poland in my first message. Diaspora voting is a real problem and thanks to the jury its impact has lessened recently.
Shall we talk about how Spain was second in the Portugal televoting? 6th in France’s televote result (France happens to house a lot of the Spanish diaspora too). Spain was top ten in the televotes for Italy, Switzerland and Belgium; it clearly has diaspora and in 2012 and 2014 the diaspora liked the songs. And if you don’t think a Spanish diaspora exists, look at the constant 12s Spain got from 2004-2009 from Andorra and Portugal. This entire diaspora argument is a bit crap seeing as everyone benefits from diaspora if they have the right song, Spain’s song was clearly… Read more »
@ John
We are talking about diaspora voting! In the televoting this year Romania was 2nd in Italy. Only because of the jury Romania didnt gen any points. I also checked last year… Romania was 1st! in the televoting in Italy.
Russia didn’t appear at Eurovision in Concert and placed 2nd. Italy didn’t appear there and placed 3rd. France did appear there and got a total of 4 points. I really don’t think promotion has much to do with this… out of all the Europeans who vote, the odds are pretty low that anyone will know any one artist in particular. One thing I forgot about Edurne’s performance is that the rhythm of the “Ieie” in the chorus changed live. I was disappointed, actually – the whole point of having the rhythm that’s in the studio recording is that it accentuates… Read more »
Tbh the total points thing isn’t really accurate, especially since Italy only joined in 2011. If you go to the thing on ESCNation, it has a friend index which looks at the points in comparison of the years present. Italy is 4th and Azerbaijan is 6th, both of which failed to give Romania points in 2015.
@ Bogdan Honciuc
And one more thing about Italy. You are completely wrong. Check on the eurovision.tv – Romania was second in the televoting in Italy! Only because of jury (26th) Romania didn’t get any points.
@ Bogdan Honciuc
Romania got 4 points from Portugal, 5 points from Spain, 12 from Moldavia, 1 from Cyprus, 2 from Denmark, 5 from Israel. In all these coutries Romanian people are a visible minority. Especially in Portugal and Spain. I’ve checked it in wikipedia. Only points from Belgium are the exception. Moreover! If you check from which countries Romania have received most points in the voting history (wikipedia), you will see that im right – Moldova, Spain, Israel, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus. Coincidence? No. Dont get me wrong. Im also from the country which benefits from diaspora voting.
@Chris
Romania received zero points from Italy, home of its biggest diaspora population. So your point is not valid.
She was too theatrical on stage. It looked funny because she over-did it. The moves, clothes, dance.. Nothing more. Her vocals were fine. She could gave kept it simpler. You have to know what to do and not to succed. Some things on stage is just a big no no. Unwritten formulas. She qo
The song hardly changed? And if it did it didn’t change much, I don’t remember hearing much change from the first official version than the mess I heard on Saturday.
I think his remarks are perfectly fair. TVE had a wonderful entry at the very start but sucked a lot of the soul out of “Amanecer” and psyched themselves out of a great entry. I had the first version as my personal winner but (and it doesn’t seem like I was alone in doing this) took it out of my top 10 as a result of the seemingly constant rewrites, revamps, and badly staged promotional performances.
@EF0912, Edurne’s song is terrible too, I hope it doesn’t take you a while to see that. Plus, Ann Sophie went to some of the Eurovision parties, came last with nil points, she promoted herself as much as Latvia and Australia did and failed to get a single point. The staging was reasonable at best, it can be compared to Euphoria and was better than the likes of Albania and Israel, both of which did better than Spain. The staging was not the issue at all. The reason Tanja’s song failed, like Edurne, was because she was a very poor… Read more »
I was the one saying this could go all the way after the first rehearsal, but the result in the final did not please me one bit. I was thinking of voting for her before the final, but after I’ve seen her I stuck to Italy and Belgium. The show with the dancer was a good idea but the execution was poor, her legs were flying all over the place, it was borderline embarassing. The shoes and the red cape were quite tacky and the LED was not as splendid as I thought it would be. All the friends I… Read more »
I agree with @Leaf. The poor camera work ruined a possible winning entry.My personal favorite since March…
Loved the song, I liked her vocals but I did not like the camera work here. It didn’t capture any drama, they only showed beautiful Edurne at the beginning with the cape and after that we did not get a clear shot of her ….. She was casting spells, she was turning and tossing ….. It felt kinda dry and not real at all, the idea was there but on TV this did not look polished and there were a few Eurovision sites that basically predicted her downfall after the jury rehearsal. And It didn’t have much to do with… Read more »
@ John
Romania like Poland benefits partly from a diaspora voting. Look at the results, from which countries these two entries received points.
The reason why Anggun didn’t get any televotes was because her song was terrible (It just took a while for people to see that) and there was no competition that year. In a very competitive field you’re staging had to be on point and I only just realised that Edurnes staging was very similar to Tanja last year. It just distracted us instead of making the song centre stage. Promotion was also vital as Edurne’s song was good but unfortunately the Spanish broadcaster was trying to please the Spanish fans instead of the all important European audience. Edurne didn’t deserve… Read more »
televote*
The reason Amanecer failed is because she couldn’t sing an already terrible song. It’s not hard to realise. Anggun had a ton of promotion for 2012 yet didn’t get a single vote. Voltaj had literally none this year and still managed to get votes in.
Every year is the same: Soraya, Pastora, Ruh and now Edurne. In every case somebody implied that RTVE was putting spokes in their wheel to avoid victory. Soraya said it loud and clear and now she is banned in RTVE.
Pastora threatened to abandon the competition if RTVE didn’t let her have things her way.
Ruth was more cautious and the drama didn’t reach public opinion, but there were rumors about her not being happy with the way RTVE handled things. And now this.
Spain will never win ESC until the people in the spanish delegation is replaced.
It’s only just registered to me that Amanecer was written by a Swede. They’re everywhere.
Publicity is points people! Edurne cancelled a scheduled appearance at Eurovision in Concert under mysterious circumstances in the spring and promotion was limited to a publicity circuit in Spain prior to her arrival in Vienna. Let’s not forget: People in Spain cannot vote for Spain at Eurovision! Cmon she wouldn’t have gained much if she had been in that small concert in Amsterdam. It is not televised and only fans know about it. Sweden didn’t win because of the promo, but because of the visuals and juries. Il Volo did not do any promo in Europe but they won the… Read more »
@David: I think every country has a different reality and money available to promote their singers during Eurovision.
Anyway, I believe the money spent in the Contest will be worth it, if the performer can keep an international and relevant career.