Romania‘s Selectia Nationala 2018 is underway, with the live auditions being carried out as we speak. Broadcaster TVR has revealed that the national jury includes Ilinca Bacila, who represented Romania at Eurovision 2017 in Kyiv together with Alex Florea.
Despite attracting only 72 songs this year, TVR knows how to maintain the interest of Eurofans for Selectia Nationala. The public broadcaster told wiwibloggs that Ilinca Bacila, the female half of Romania’s 2017 act for Eurovision, is on the national jury. At just 19 years old, she is the youngest ever member of the Selectia Nationala jury.
The bubbly singer is joined by Viorel Gavrila, who previously chaired the jury in 2015, Marian Ionescu (frontman of pop-rock band Directia 5), famed guitarist Nicu Patoi and lyricist Liliana Stefan, wife of Romania’s first Eurovision representative Dan Bittman. The five jury members will have to choose 60 semi-finalists out of the 72 entries.
Fans are speculating that Ilinca’s presence on the jury might be in favour of her 2017 partner Alex Florea, who submitted a song for Lisbon as well. However, given that “Yodel It!” was a one-time musical collaboration and Ilinca and Alex are not related, this does not represent a conflict of interest.
The live auditions for Selectia Nationala 2018 are currently underway. Fan favourites Feli and M I H A I performed their entries in front of the jury yesterday, with the former singing her song “Buna de iubit” in Spanish. Both are widely expected to make the cut.
New Selectia Nationala 2018 songs are out
Here are other Selectia Nationala 2018 entries that have been unveiled over the past days.
Jukebox & Bella Santiago – “Auzi Cum Bate” (live at the Selectia Nationala auditions)
Ayona – “Watch Me Fly”
Jessie Banes – “Lightning Strikes”
Alexia & Matei – “Walking On Water”
Alessandro Danescu – “Breaking Up”
Alice Jeckel – “Out Of The Dark”
Ioana Ciornea – “Time After Time”
Teodora Dinu – “Fly”
Sergiu Bolota – “Every Little Thing”
The 60 semi-finalists of Selectia Nationala 2018 should be announced tomorrow.
What do you think about Ilinca joining the jury? And which of the new songs caught your attention? Let us know in the comments!
Jukebox & Bella Santiago “Auzi Cum Bate” is my favorite the song is amazing .wish them on the atice arena stage .
Lightning Strikes caught my attention, love the lyrics and the imagery, and staging could be really cool
Out of these none of them is better than Feli….
Fly is fine, others are not good.Hope we’ll see a bit better songs than these ones, which are either boring and go nowhere or just badly produced and sound cheap or dated.
I think “Auzi Cum Bate” is the strongest song presented till now. “Fly” is nice too, but it doesn’t beat the first. Alessandro Danescu has a nice voice, but his song goes nowhere imo. Still, none of them gave me the “wow moment”.
Also, “Lightning Strikes” is horrible lol.
Mihai stands no chance now.
I think Alex will qualify, since only twelve are going to be discarded, and we have heard some pretty bad songs.
She’ll maybe judge his kiss on stage too…