As the old adage goes, if it ain’t broken – don’t fix it.
Considering Luca Hänni achieved an incredible fourth place at Eurovision 2019 (their best result since 1993), Swiss broadcaster SRF has stuck with doing away with the previous national selection show Die Entscheidungsshow, opting again for an internal selection.
The news was announced on the SRF website this morning by Luca, who reminisced of submitting his entry “She Got Me” this time last year. Now a platinum-selling recording artist, he goes to prove what a difference a year makes!
The broadcaster will instead open submissions on 2 September, encouraging songwriters, producers, artists and lyricists to submit a song. Like last year, entries submitted will not be made publicly available – meaning that we will have to wait until a later date for the big winning song reveal.
The SRF website has released a regulations document, including their agenda for their song selection. The network is looking for a “modern, striking song that complies with international requirements, and have a strong, clear and understandable message”.
Applicants are able to submit a song without a singer, but must provide a demo voice. This does leave room for SRF to internally select their artist and match them with an appropriate song.
The winning song and singer combo will be chosen again by an 100-member audience panel and 20 experts on an international jury – who have already proven their ESC expertise as members of their countries’ national juries. Their final decision, with each group accounting for 50% of total votes, will determine who will fly the red and white flag to The Netherlands in 2020.
SRF will be hoping to repeat the success of this year, with the same selection process garnering their best result in years.
Who would you like to see enter Switerland’s internal selection? Let us know in the comments below.
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amazing post, and a very informative blog.
I don’t care if they’re Americans that can sing in Brazilian Portuguese, I want Sofi Tukker to represent Switzerland next year. They’re a really good band and their music is addictive af! especially songs like Drinkee, Benadryl , and Grande Playa.
Absolutely and get rid of the cringe, horrible national final You decide, I’m with you there.
Nobody sees it says SWITERLAND after 24 hrs? Where is Z? I mean it would be ok SWEETZERLAND if we talk about Luca, he’s so cool and kind. But please now correct it and make it right.
What about SWEATERLAND?
Adrian Zieber from Lovebugs, please
Ginta Biku pls
“Cet air la” was great! A cool song with French and English (in the NF performance) and a very modern stage show with the holograms <3
I think one of the three highlights for me this year was the response Hänni got in the semi-final. I hope they’ll make a similar impact next year. And if Switzerland win, then please get Céline Dion for the legends slot in Geneva 2021.
God! How is Swiss German a dialect and not a separate language? As a person, speaking German, I didn’t understand anything he said. Sounded more like Dutch
As a swiss living in germany I get that a lot from germans … but yeah, it’s considered as a dialect…. ?
As a dutch person, I can tell you that Swiss German sounds nothing like dutch to us. I watched the Swiss final the past few years… and honestly I didn’t understand most of what the host was saying XD
Oh, Swiss selection, internal or national, is one of those I don’t really worry about.
I personally would be happy to see 77 Bombay Street, The Vad Vuc, Sebalter or Eluveitie to enter it, because they are really great artists that make some amazing music I use to listen in the times I don’t listen to ESC songs, but I’m pretty sure whatever Switzerland will choose it’s gonna be something awesome and I am gonna love it just like I loved their every entry of the last 8 years.
It’s great that Switzerland, which is in my opinion by far the most underrated country in the competition, finally got a deserved place. Let’s just hope they don’t pull a Cyprus on us and redo what worked last year but worse. I think Switzerland has plenty of capable singers and I hope we will see Switzerland in the top 5 next yearbecause that would be great revenge on the unjustified results that they got in 2008, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018.
OFF TOPIC SINCE THE ARTICLE WASN’T MADE YET
TVR announced Golden Stag 2019 participants and some have been to ESC or NS
Anna Odobescu (Moldova 2019)
Tamara (Georgia 2017)
Monika Marija (Lithuania NS 2018, 2019)
Sara de Blue (San Marino NS 2018)
Syuzanna Melqonyan (Armenia NS 2017)
It really is incredible what Luca Hänni and team Switzerland were able to achieve this year. In their last 15 attempts prior to 2019, only 4 of their entries qualified for the grand final, of which only 2 made the left hand side of the score board. For the many of us Eurovision fans who only started following the Eurovision Song Contest in the last decade, to finally see Switzerland contend for the win was really special, especially since many of their past entries were unjustifiably underrated. I really hope this year is the start of a Swiss slayage at… Read more »
Cyprus isn’t exactly an under-performing country, given that they have qualified 5 years in a row (but yes, the first three of which they were ranked below 20th), but I agree very much with you on Czech Republic. With that being said, it also hurts to see Latvia again gets lost in the wilderness after 2 years of good results in 2015-16. And don’t forget Portugal…
Hi Ziv. I meant the period of 2006 to 2013, where Cyprus failed to qualify for the finals 6 out of 8 times. After their return in 2015, they have been a consistent qualifier. Yeah, it definitely is a shame about Latvia and Portugal. For Latvia, I feel that the issue, particularly in the last 2 years, was that they chose the wrong song in their national final… Songs like ‘esamiba’, ‘cherry absinthe’, or a Markus Riva offering would have likely fared better. As for Portugal, it boggles the mind how quality and unique entries like ‘o jardim’ and ‘telemóveis’… Read more »
I didn’t follow closely the national finals, so I can’t judge whether they chose the right songs, but Funny Girl was my number 4 last year. That Night is apparently not that appealing. If Lithuania had not been in the same semi, Latvia would have ended up getting only 1 point from televote. I just watched the semi finals of 2012 last week, the Latvian song was really helpless, not to mention their 2013 and 2014 songs. Perhaps the only way to save Latvia is to have Animata involved. Let her be Valentina of Latvia. Keep getting involved in Eurovision.
Aminata actually composed songs for Latvia’s national selection in both 2018 and 2019 (although both failed to qualify out of their semi-finals), and for Lithuania’s national selection in 2017 (which finished as the runner-up), so it really won’t surprise me if we see her soon at Eurovision again. 🙂
I wouldn’t mind seeing Nick Antik in the mix again. He was on RSI’s shortlist last year and I actually really liked his song (though it’s obviously better that Luca went). However, with another song and access to better production, he has the potential to do well for the Swiss.
Don’t understand why did you get downvoted
I’m not saying he’d do as well as Luca did, but it would be a nice change in pace. Other countries that have been finding recent success (Cyprus, Bulgaria) tend to repeat their successful formulas, and Nick’s voice is completely different from Luca’s.
Right!
I hope they choose Stefanie Heinzmann. She is also from the Stefan Raab cosmos, like Max Mutzke, Lena and Roman Lob. And they all achieved very good results.
I hope to see South Korean girl group Everglow representing Switzerland next year! They are from the agency Yuehua Entertainment, they have two alumni of the South Korean survival show Produce 48 – Kim Sihyeon and Wang Yiren – and they made a smash debut with the song “Bon bon chocolat”.
And why would they represent Switzerland?
Because of the name of the song, I guess. so if Switzerland doesn’t pick them, there’s also Belgium to try.
Last time BBC had an internal selection, they chose Electro Velvet. #justsaying
Listen, I’ll have my coming-out here: I freaking LOVE Electro Velvet’s “Still In Love With You”!!! And I don’t care about what the British say (I watched the wiwi reaction video from 2015 a month ago: you were very shocked back then – no need to feel like this <3 ) or how many downvotes I'll get. The melody, the swing, the charm, the 1920s feeling WAS AMAZING. 12 points from Germany to you!
100% agree with you, ESCfan2009
Believe it or not, Electro Velvet was my guilty pleasure from 2015 as well – I still enjoy it to this very day!
I really loved it when they chose bonnie tyler in 2013 though. Too bad her voice couldn’t live up to her former greatness.
After Luca from the German-speaking area, they should choose someone from the Italian or French speaking regions so I bet Bastian Baker will be among the candidates. I just hope they don’t choose a ‘She got me’ 2.0…
Well, it worked. “She Got Me” got them into 4th, so an other good song might bring them to the finals too.
And also add press hype.
I think Switzerland is going to play the part Bulgaria and Cyprus played these past years. They got their best results on years and they going to hype the crap out of it, and then flop majestically on May.
No one knows which path Switzerland would follow. In fact, the history of Bulgaria also offers two ways: getting the 5th in 2007, and NQ for many years, or getting 4th in 2016, and up 2 more places the next year. By the way, North Macedonia is another country to see how would they do after this year’s success.
So, get Sebalter to collaborate with Timebelle and everyone will be happy. Well, at least I would.
Tbh, if theres any collab I want, its sebalter, Alexander rybak, and sandra nurmsalu
Listen, it worked. So let the team who`s responsible for this choice make the other one as well.
“have a strong, clear and understandable message”
So this year’s strong, clear and understandable message is dirty dancing?
Well, sex sells.
Wonder if the fact that their national final name was unpronounceable was part of the problem haha. Just kidding, I’m Lithuania so I can’t judge with Eurovizijos dainu konkurso nacionalin? atranka. Still, I’m normally not one to blame the selection method for country’s results, for example Portugal won despite having one of the worst national finals out there, yet year after year the Swiss national final just felt like a parade of mediocrity with one or two songs that got completely lost on me by the contest. After this year, Switzerland seems to be going on a good direction so… Read more »
Another Fuego rip-off? 😀
Add Lithuania to that, although our cash desperate broadcaster will never give up the money the Atranka marathon brings in
Hope to see Nicole Bernegger or Seven as artists!
Considering Switzerland is still one of the weakest participating country of this century, maybe brighter things will come after this year! Unless Laurell Barker composes a song similar to Germany and the UK this year, Switzerland will be back to their usual NQ
I agree! Time we ditched that horrific national final