She’s the Latvian star who has been internally selected to represent her country at Eurovision 2021. Now Samanta Tīna is getting busy with Latvia‘s best musical creatives to find her song for Rotterdam. At a recent songwriting camp, Samanta teamed up with fellow Eurovision diva Aminata Savadogo.
The songwriting camp was held earlier this week in Riga’s Sound Division studios. Samanta Tīna was joined by some of Latvia’s top music talent in an effort to come up with her song for Rotterdam.
Among the camp attendees as Aminata Savadogo. The Latvian diva represented her country at Eurovision 2015, where her song “Love Injected” placed fifth in the grand final. Aminata was also the lyricist for Samanta Tīna’s Eurovision 2020 song “Still Breathing” — which gave us the iconic lyric “Life is music, I am a composer”.
Also at the session was “Still Breathing” producer Arnis Račinskis, rounding out the dream team behind the song that Samanta Tīna took to Supernova victory.
Another notable producer at the camp was Kaspars Ansons. He co-produced “Love Injected” with Animata as well as her 2016 song for Justs, “Heartbeat”. As one of Latvia’s leading producers, he’s a smart choice to have at the songwriting camp.
Other creatives writing for Samanta Tīna at the camp were beatmaker Niklavs Sekačs, indie musician Jūlijs Melngailis, songwriter Alise Joste, electronic producerAndis Ansons, producer Jānis Jačmenkins, Double Faced Eels (Supernova 2019) frontman Reinis Straume and EDM producer Juris Graubergers.
All the musicians seem geared towards the edgy electronic pop that Samanta Tīna have favoured in recent years. This suggests that the Latvian diva won’t be moving too far from the direction of the bombastic synth-pop track “Still Breathing”.
There is still no word from broadcaster LTV on exactly how Samanta’s song for Rotterdam will be selected. It may be internally selected or the broadcaster might take inspiration from Israel and hold a national final to select Samanta Tīna’s Eurovision song. Earlier in the year, LTV made comments that suggested some sort of television show would be involved.
Samanta Tīna’s journey to Eurovision
It’s been a long road for Samanta Tīna to make it to Eurovision. She made five previous attempts at Latvia’s national final — and two attempts in neighbouring Lithuania — before finally winning Supernova 2020 with “Still Breathing”.
After Eurovision 2020 was cancelled, there was initial uncertainty if Samanta would get a return ticket to Rotterdam. But at a special show ahead of Eurovision: Europe Shine a Light, Samanta was surprised with the good news that she had been internally selected for Eurovision 2021.
She will finally have the chance to take her musical eleganza to Rotterdam in May 2021.
What do you think? Should Samanta Tīna choose a song like “Still Breathing”? Can Aminata pen another Eurovision hit? Tell us your thoughts below.
This is exciting. Great team and hopefully creative this year.
I am very glad it’s a mostly Latvian production team. I think a lot of countries are gonna be more local this year which makes me super happy.
Aminata is the best thing happened to Latvia for Eurovision.
I really loved “Still breathing” and I think she could’ve qualified because she was in the weaker SF (the 2nd one IIRC). But I know everyone didn’t enjoyed it as much as I did so I hope she’ll bring something better that will allow her to qualify no matter the SF she is in.
It would be cool to have a small NF with 5 songs maximum with bops like “Still breathing” and ballads or songs like “Love Injected” different from what we’re used to hear from Samanta.
OK this is promising! Especially excited to hear what the producer of “Love Injected” and “Heartbeat” will compose since those are my favourite Latvian entries.
So happy that Aminata is on the dream team! I loved Love Injected,song
Heartbeat and Still breathing So I am excited for Samantha’s new song