In summer, Georgian Public Broadcaster (GPB) revealed that they would be using Georgian Idol to select their artist for Eurovision 2020. And now, after three rounds of auditions, the country is a few steps closer to making that final decision. The ten contestants have been selected to battle it out in the live shows of the singing competition starting next week.
At the end of yesterday’s third audition show, the four judges — Tinatin Berdzenishvili, Davit Evgenidze, Natia Todua and David Aladashvili — brought back all the artists that had received a golden ticket following their initial audition. They had the very hard decision of whittling the contestants down to the final ten.
In the end, the following acts were chosen to advance to the next stage of the competition:
- Anri Guchmanidze
- Barbara Samkharadze
- Davit Rusadze
- Liza Shengelia
- Mariam Gogiberidze
- Mariam Shengelia
- Merab Amzoevi
- Nika Kalandadze
- Tamar Kakalashvili
- Tornike Kipiani
The final ten includes a number of singing competition veterans. Tornike Kipiani won X Factor Georgia in 2014 and his mentor was Greek-Georgian beauty Tamta who exploded onto the Eurovision scene, when she was internally selected to represent Cyprus with the banging dance track “Replay”. This also won’t be the first time that Tornike has tried to represent Georgia at Eurovision. He competed in Georgia’s Eurovision 2017 national final, with the industrial techno song “You Are My Sunshine”.
Anri Guchmanidze won X Factor Georgia in 2018 and his mentor was Anri Jokhadze, who sang for Georgia at Eurovision 2012. Also taking the talent show route is Barbara Samkharadze, who won Georgia’s Got Talent in 2015.
Next Saturday, 16th November, sees the start of the live shows of Georgian Idol, which will take place in Tbilisi Concert Hall. The public will be able to vote for their favourite acts via both telephone voting as well as through the Facebook Messenger app. It’s thought this approach will encourage voters young and old to express themselves.
In the second stage of the competition, the Georgian Public Broadcaster’s team will select a song for the winner of Idol. Before the live shows start, you can familiarise yourselves with the final ten by watching their initial auditions below.
Merab Amzoevi
Mariam Gogiberidze
Anri Guchmanidze
Tamar Kakalashvili
Nika Kalandadze
Davit Rusadze
Coming Soon
Barbara Samkharadze
Mariam Shengelia
Liza Shengelia
Tornike Kipiani
Unlike the last season of Georgian Idol, which selected both the artist and the song for Eurovision, this year’s series will only select the artist. The future winner of Georgian Idol will then have their Eurovision song internally selected.
What do you make of the top ten contestants in Georgian Idol 2020? Who do you want to see represent the country at Eurovision? Sound off in the comments below!
Hope they’ll pick a pop act with a banger song (like Malta and Belarus did this year and they’ve qualified), not a rubbish non comercial rock song, like Georgia had this year (with a mediocre performance and show, as well)…
Tornike Kipiani’s “You Are My Sunshine” was actually pretty cool.
Speaking of the 2012 Anri, I still don’t get how that ‘act’ happened. Did they really have nothing else? Even for Eurovision, it was nonsensical to the extreme.
They have crazy good singers there, they just need the right song and they have it in the bag. I suggest giving the artist an influence on the song.
The song has always been the problem of Georgia. They have a lot of singers with stunning abd powerful voices but the songs they sent in the past years weren’t made for an international competition. It reminds me a lot of Albania too. Great singers with average songs.
I hope they can match a good song to the singers, last years song was a disaster and a complete waste of great staging and great vocals.
This line-up is actually pretty good.
They all have great voices, like really good. Nika Kalandadze in Liza Shengelia stand out for me though