The youngest contestants in Iceland’s national final Söngvakeppnin 2016 are Erna Mist and Magnús Thorlacius, two 17-year-old students who happen to be dating as well. Their song is called “Ótöluð orð”, with both the song and lyrics written by the duo. This is their debut at Söngvakeppnin so we wanted to know a little bit more about this young and promising couple.
What made you want to enter the competition this year?
Söngvakeppnin sounded like a good platform to start our music career. We haven’t released anything before so this is the first time our music reaches the public.
How long have you guys been doing music?
Separately we’ve been writing music for a while, but we started writing music together about a year ago, when we started dating. Playing music is our favourite thing to do together, and definitely something we want to continue doing together.
What’s the story behind the song?
One night a melody came to us and we figured it would be fun to write a song around it and try out for Söngvakeppnin. We were also just curious to see if a song like this would be chosen as an entry since it is not really one of those typical Eurovision songs. We barely made it through though, since we wrote the melody the night before the initial deadline. Fortunately RÚV extended the deadline, so we could finish the song and write some lyrics and send the song in.
What initiated the collaboration?
It all started with us dating and the fact that both of us are really interested in songwriting and singing. After we started playing together people told us that our voices synchronised really well, so we just decided to become a duo.
If you go all the way, do you think you will change the song — for example, sing it in English in Stockholm?
We originally wrote the song in English, with the title “No Man’s Land”. The idea was always to sing it English, but we wrote the Icelandic lyrics for Söngvakeppnin, according to the rules. So if we make it all the way to Stockholm we will use the English lyrics.
Any messages to the readers of Wiwibloggs?
We hope we will connect with the audience through our song and our lyrics without all the fireworks and glitter.
Erna and Magnüs will compete in the second semi-final of Söngvakeppnin, this Saturday.
