They took the theme Dare to dream to a whole new level in Tel Aviv, serving a starry LED that resembled a dreamscape. Now Slovenia‘s broadcaster RTVSLO is looking for the successor of Zala Kralj & Gasper Santl. Today they revealed the concept of their partly renewed national selection.
EMA 2020 will again reach its climax on a final night in February with 10 acts. But two of them will have fought for their place in the final through a separate competition. Since the average Eurovision viewer gets younger and younger every year, songs with a current sound have a tendency to do rather well. Especially when it comes to Slovenia: the atmospheric electro-entry “Sebi” and the trap-influenced banger “Hvala, ne!” brought the country back to the final two years in a row. That’s a huge step forward for a country that has at times struggled to advance to the Saturday show.
That’s why Slovenian broadcaster RTVSLO decided to give young musicians even more opportunities for next year’s selection. So they launched not only the usual application round, but also EMA Freš – uh, so fresh!
EMA Freš is meant to secure new and non-established acts under the age of 26 a place in the main competition. Acts who have not released more than three songs so far have been invited to send in a one-minute-long video of themselves performing. The 18 best — with the “most fresh” entries — as decided by an expert panel, have now been revealed, and here they are:
- Astrid in Avantgarden – “Sing To Me”
- Alfirev – “Črno bela lika”
- Klarity – “Diham”
- Lana Hrvatin – “Dream”
- Ljudmila Frelih – “Vztrajaj, ker je vredno”
- Marko Škof – “Hočem da je vse kot prej”
- Martina – “Pleši”
- Marmoris – “Moj prista”
- Nuša Pliberšek – “Življenje je čarovnija”
- Parvani Violet – “Cupid”
- Petra Ceglar – “Srce naglas”
- Pia Nina – “Tukaj in zdaj”
- Sara Petešič – “Sanjaj / Dream”
- Saška – “Še kar lovim tvoj nasmeh”
- Soulution – “Bil bom s teboj”
- Stella – “Ne vem, če sem v redu”
- Tilen Lotrič – “Jaz in ti”
- Younite – “The Cure”
So far the process is not that difficult to understand. But Slovenians are known for giving their selection some extra twist. This time they want to keep us excited with a clever and complicated selection system. And since the songs above will probably be the first potential Eurovision 2020 songs we’ll get to hear, this will be very exciting! The 18 chosen songs will compete in duels. The competition starts on 4 November with the first two songs to participate against each other.
From this day on, every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, an online duel will take place. Then the three daily winners of the week will battle it out on Friday to become the overall weekly favourite. After that, the jury will select one more song as their weekly-winner. Meaning that every week two songs will make it to the next stage.
These duels will last for three weeks, meaning that six songs will make it to the next round of the show: the EMA Freš final. But hold on! Everyone deserves a second chance, right? The twelve songs that didn‘t make it to the final round will still have the chance to do so. For the next two weeks these “lucky losers” will again battle it out in duels.
So after these two weeks, another four songs will be through and will join the first six winners. In the end, a total of 10 songs will take part in the EMA Freš final – with the date yet to be announced. This whole process will take place online through a special voting website.
Only two of these 10 acts will get crowned winners and move on to take part in the actual final of Slovenia‘s EMA 2020 in February – together with the eight artists selected by the Slovenian broadcaster. Established acts still have time to apply at RTVSLO.
One thing is for sure: the battles of EMA Freš will begin on 4 November with the last decision to be made on 6 December. This means we’ll probably get to hear the very first potential Eurovision entry of the season in only two weeks time.
Responsible for the 18 songs that have been chosen (and for making further decisions in the process) are singer and songwriter Bojan Cvjetićanin, TV presenter Klemen Kopina, Eurovision-expert and journalist Denis Živcec and Slovenian social media-stars Maja Pinteric and Rebeka Tomc.
What do you think? Will the fresh section of EMA 2020 help make the national final in Slovenia even more current? Who could become the next representative and fly the Slovenian flag in Rotterdam? Let us know in the comments below.
Sad the band Joker Out with their new song “Gola” are not there. They seem pretty young, and have had only one song before Gola. I hope it’s because somebody of them just don’t fit into the “26 y.o”-rule, so they submitted it for the actual Ema.
If they did not, I recommend people who read this to check the song out cuz it’s fire.
https://youtu.be/TJlDftstLBQ
We are very excited about it. It’s gonna be kind of fun project on social media where teens will vote for their favorites.
Just don’t get too excited since they will present us only demo versions of their songs,probably recorded with their iPhones or so…
Anyways, it’s gonna be interesting and i can’t wait.
Telemoveis vibes 🙁
If it’s online duels what is the website where I can vote or is that only possible in Slovenia because I’m in UK
I believe you’ll be able to vote
slovenia is sort of having a eurovision renaissance!
It does looks like the Sanremo newcomers section. At least EMA is making some good changes for their coming national final.
I’m still listening to Sebi, btw.
Same here
My favourite Slovenian entry ever!! Sebi was my #2 this year.. I love their music. Love from Australia.
Listened to a few of the other songs by the Freš artists. Big fan of Petra Ceglar’s “Dovolj mi je” but then again, who knows what the actual Freš songs are gonna be like
This is so overly complicated and unnecessary. I love it!
I appreciate the thinking-outside-the-box approach. Perhaps the broadcaster took a page from Sanremo Giovanni with a more prolonged period of eliminations. If it worked for an outsider like Mahmud in Sanremo, why not make it happen in Slovenia too? However, I wish there were more songs in the final so that the portion of the non-established acts will be greater than 20% of the total amount of songs. A final with 12 songs including 8 established acts and 4 non-established acts could have been more advantageous to the selection process.
Oh yeah and Raiven said that she won’t return for the next few years
good! she doesn’t need to get markusrivased.
And then they end up last at EMA… just choose Raiven,Nika or BQL internally with a winning song.
We’re so over them here in Slovenia haha
So no Senidah for Slovenia… I hope maybe she’ll represent my country (Montenegro) since we’ve been on a bad streak lately
Well she may be one of the established acts(but I still doubt it)…
Oh I forgot about that maybe she’ll apply there
Let the games begin! Love seeing Slovenia up their game even more.
Sounds like an interesting way to build expectation for the actual EMA, give opportunity to new talents and make the audience feel their voices are heard. My only criticism is that battles can lead to good songs being eliminated before bad ones. But it will be fun to have some entries to listen to that early in the pre-season.
Yeah same system is in Mello, bad songs are in 4 semi and good songs are in 1 or 2 semi …