She is fast approaching national treasure status in her native Finland. And tonight Saara Aalto will take to the Eurovision 2018 stage during the first semi-final. Following her first rehearsal she met with our William to talk staging and her newly released album.
Referring to her first run through, the X Factor star says, “I am happy and it’s gonna be perfect, but you know we had some technical issues.” As she was rotating in a wheel it only went halfway and left Saara upside down. “I was like oh my god, I thought I would be stuck there hanging around for the full song, thank god I didn’t.”
“We’re fixing everything to make it perfect but I’m very happy, it’s gonna be great.” Rest assured, all technical issues have now been ironed out.
For the stage performance, several elements from her two other UMK songs are used. “It is a mixture of all those three songs because we saw which elements worked and we wanted to make a mixture.”
“We wanted to have this androginous army with me”, Saara comments on her dancers.
On her outfit change, Saara says that “we had a chance to create something totally new.”
And on her new album Wild Wild Wonderland, which came out just as she was flying to Lisbon, Saara names “Don’t Deny Our Love” as her favourite track.
“The message is so personal to me. The song is about Meri singing to me, she was like you can’t deny this. She is so wise and has that strong intuition, and I couldn’t deny in the end.”
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She ain’t gonna qualify among these monsters anymore.
You were saying? #GoSaara
I didn’t like the song at first and it’s still not my favorite but it has really grown on me. It is pretty generic, it’s a typical radio friendly pop song but it has a good message. In my opinion this is the song that speaks about mental health and can be really uplifting. I like it more than Christabelle’s song.
The best they can hope for is that it’s perfect for what it is, but that’s unfortunately not saying much. This has been such a disappointment, honestly. Can’t believe Brian Friedman is willing to put his name on this and I also can’t believe anyone would send a song with hook they can’t reproduce live. The squeaking of the back-up singers is laughable. It’s just such a waste because Saara could do so much with the right song. If this manages to squeeze through to the final, it will definitely not place high.
You put such an effort to diss Saara… I’d like to see your face tonight when it appears that Saara got through and even more late on Saturday night in the end of voting. In the meantime, don’t suffocate from your negativity.