Last Thursday, Serbia’s RTS finally revealed the names of the artists taking part in Beovizija 2020.
The list of 24 acts competing to represent Serbia in May includes Sanja Vucic’s girl band Hurricane, a couple of Beovizija regulars and North Macedonia’s 2015 act as part of a songwriting team – alongside many others.
Another name you may recognize from the list is Thea Devy. That’s if you follow Eurovision rumours closely, anyway.
Thea Devy came to public eye last November when it was revealed she was in talks to represent Austria at Eurovision 2020.
Her song “Judgement Day”, as claimed by her production studio, was among ORF’s top 3 picks, but eventually lost out to Austrian-Filipino singer Vincent Bueno.
After the RTS artists reveal, many fans questioned if the singer selected for Beovizija and the singer not selected for Austria were the same person – and if she entered both competitions with the same song. Now Thea Devy has publicly confirmed the rumour.
Hello there!Most of you have already heard the news, that I will be participating at the 2020 festival Beovizija,…
Posted by Thea Devy on Friday, January 10, 2020
Despite losing Austria’s internal selection, Thea had only sweet words for Vincent.
“There are no hard feelings, though, just pure love for the people I got to meet at ORF and for the artist that was ultimately chosen to represent Austria. I wish him only the best and can’t wait to see whatever exciting things will happen for him in the time leading up to the ESC.”
It wasn’t an easy task for the Vienna-based singer to enter the competition in Serbia, though. Her song had to be rewritten and translated into Serbian to comply with Beovizija rules that state all the songs have to be sung in one of the country’s official languages. Naturally English is not one of them.
And that’s how “Judgement Day” became “Sudnji Dan”.
Beovizija 2020: Do we know the dates yet?
The broadcaster confirmed that the competition will take place at the end of February this year. However, no official date has been given.
The format will also be unchanged from last year, with two semi-finals and a grand final.
RTS also state that should there be any issues with the winning performer or song, they will choose who will go to Eurovision in their place.
What a performance, WOW…Hurricane kills… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPOfTfgiu3Q
Serbia doesnt need rejected songs by other countries. Just send Hurricane
Good luck to her. However, I’m not a huge fan of acts/songwriters who hawk their songs from one country to the next. If the song wasn’t good enough to beat out Vincent Bueno’s…then I don’t know if Serbia should really be considering it (but I’ll guess we’ll see).
I see this comment quite often. I don’t always agree, because the point is made in the assumption that best songs tend to win or be selected. As we witnessed many times last year, that often isn’t the case. I believe that Thea (and all artists who do so) just believes in her song no matter what and that’s fine by me. What I am concerned about are the lyrics. If she changes them again (assuming she wins), it means that the song itself was a ”Jack in the box” during the competition. I don’t know how I feel about… Read more »
Let’s see what happens. Lord knows being “of descent” as opposed to actually from the country doesn’t stop locals from voting for you (or at least getting an assist from a local – hi Victor Crone!), but actually singing in Serbian means she’d better bring it.
inb4 it’s better than alive
Well she is of Serbian heritage, although admitting you’ve entered the same song for ORF and RTS is a bit daft. However, the song will have to be good for her to even have a fighting chance to compete against the big names in Beovizja. If it is, then it suggests that ORF are onto something even better with Vincent!
She can probably use this to build up a name in the fandom for Austria to reconsider within the next few years.
It’s also possible that her song is much better than Vincent’s one, but they still went for him, as politics (connections) do play a role here, let’s not fake it
True- Vincent competed in the NF in 2016 and sang backing vocals for Nathan the following year, so he had the benefit of familiarity.
This year the ORF also pays attention to whether someone is stable under the pressure of a live broadcast and can deliver in a time slot of 3 minutes and has already had very good experiences with Vincent Bueno years ago. Nowadays, ORF would kill for the ratings they had with Vincent on Friday evenings in 2007/2008. https://youtu.be/GgXhywBxug4
And what said ORF’s Andy Knoll last year after the dreadful semi final “This year we brought the arts to the contest and next year we gonna do something different” 😉
How do you know she is of Serbian heritage? Which parent is Serbian?