After languishing near the bottom of the scoreboard for the past three years — finishing 27th, 26th and 25th — Germany came roaring back to life at Eurovision 2018.
Somewhat ignored prior to the contest, Michael Schulte’s “You Let Me Walk Alone” is a quiet song of personal loss –the death of his father at a young age. During the Eurovision fortnight it gained more and more momentum, owing to effective staging that made the song’s narrative of perseverance and pain both simple yet unmistakable. He stood in front of a pop-up projection screen which set him apart from other acts on the sparse Lisbon stage. Those visuals were reflected in the tears running down faces of fans in the front row.
He finished in fourth place — Germany’s best result since Lena won in 2010.
Germany at Eurovision 2019: Applications now open
Building on that momentum, Germany is already getting back in the game.
The official Eurovision.de web site has launched its online application form, which is aimed at finding individual artists, singer-songwriters and bands. They have not set an end-date for the selection process or revealed details of how it will unfold. This is merely an initial call to get the ball rolling.
Entry is free, you must be at least 18 years old and anyone can apply — regardless of whether they hold German citizenship. Although they are looking for singers, they also welcome songs from composers who don’t want to perform themselves.
You can learn more on the eurovision.de FAQs page.
Germany’s revamped selection process
Last year NDR received over 1,000 applications from singers. Producers then cut the number down to 200. These 200 were judged by NDR’s chosen experts and the Europe Panel, which actually consisted of German Eurovision fans whose taste has been found to mirror that of Europe at large (looking at historical voting patterns).
Only 20 candidates made it to the next round, where they attended musical workshops and wrote songs. A final cut narrowed them down to just six finalists.
The actual final was a combination of televotes and an international jury. The international jury in Germany featured 19 jurors from all over Europe. It was a fine selection of artists, songwriters, musicians and choreographers, with jurors hailing from Iceland all the way to Armenia. It also included some carefully selected people from the music and theatre industry in Germany.
Is the only way up for Germany? Can they keep the momentum going? Let us know in the comments box below.
Photo: Andres Putting (EBU)
I’m so proud of Germany and Michael for turning it around. They really deserved it. If we can get a run of songs as good as, say 1979-1985 (aka the Our Lord and Savior Ralph Siegel Years) or 10-12 (aka the Lena Our Lord and Savior and Also Roman Who’s Very Good Years), Germany’s in a good place.
I hope Ryk will come back. My dream participant would be Xavier Naidoo. Will never happen (again). :/
Feuerherz, Ben Zucker, Wincent Weiss, Sarah Connor, Kay One, Cristin Stark, VoXXclub, Anna Maria Zimmermann…… Really a lot
Because i hate Mercy, i thought Italy willl be low too, but I was wrong to put it in the same league with abomination from France. Good luck Germany!
I hate Mercy with a passion and i was sure will be low, but i was always sure Germany will do well.
Didn’t expect them to get into Top 5 this year but whatever they were doing clearly worked so they should totally keep it up!
Germany’s national selection was a actually good surprise this year. They had only 6 acts just like the UK, but with more diversity and better songwriting. Maybe it’s too early to tell if they found their path to avoid the last positions year after year, but it was a start. Let’s see how they’ll deal with Michael’s success.
Weren’t the votes coming from 3 different groups?
Yes. They had an international jury, a “Europe panel” (which I think had about 100 German regular Eurovision fans who live all across Europe), and the public vote. Michael Schulte ended up getting the maximum 12 points from all three groups.
Germany needs to take this result and keep it. They’re back to the competition! Keep sending such good songs.
Well artist/song submissions start fairly early in many countries.
Berlin 2020?
Germany screwed up after Cascada’s poor result. They had high expectations, but “Glorious” ended up in the bottom. A good result can motivate a country do to better in the contest, so perhaps things will change once again.
Moldova, Belgium, France, Bulgaria and The Netherlands are examples of this “motivation” as well.
They should just do an internal selection. Germany has so many talented (mostly male) artists. Just pick or ask one of these: Max Giesinger Tom Beck Mark Forster Johannes Oerding Philipp Poisel Wincent Weiss Tim Bendzko Adel Tawil Joris Andreas Bourani Johannes Strate (Revolverheld) The list goes on. These are all artists that would favorably do well with juries at least. Germany should be so wise to keep up with the formula of the young talented songwriter. The past has shown that these relatively unknown female singers (Ann-Sophie, Jamie-Lee, Levina) were all cookie cutters with less experience on stage and… Read more »
Na Na Na Na Na Na mi mi mi ka!
Dude, I would actually pay for have Tom Beck at Eurovision. I’ve been a massive fan since the AFC11 times.
BTW, has anybody mentioned that the German entry was the highest placed one among those chosen in a national final? Who did that see coming that the German NF would result in a more successful song than MF, FDC, MGP, DMGP and so on?
I guess it’s the song, not the selection method, that matters
Albania has already called for FIK songs. 🙂
They definitely have to rethink the way the votes are given out. They thought they were being clever when they used the strange method of first giving out the low votes from all juries and the televoters before turning to the 12s. It just didn’t work out and actually made the voting procedure less exciting.
I like the current system that Eurovision uses, where the jury votes are given out first and then they reveal the combined public televote scores in ascending order, from fewest to most points. I don’t know how the German broadcaster could do that with three sets of points, unless they reveal the public vote points first and then combine the jury and panel points into a combined score and reveal those in ascending order from fewest to most points. At least the way Eurovision does it now they keep the suspense going until the very end instead of having one… Read more »