Another song release date has been confirmed for Eurovision 2021. Vasil has confirmed that his song for Rotterdam “Here I Stand” will be released on Thursday 11 March. He’s also shared a snippet of the song, which reveals it includes a gospel choir.
Vasil shared the news with a post on social media. The announcement was accompanied by a short clip of the song.
View this post on Instagram
The song clip features a gospel choir singing a cappella. The lyrics suggest the song will have an uplifting message, of surviving and growing stronger in the face of adversity. The choir sings:
They all tried to break us
Not knowing it’s what makes us
This is how we found our way
The backing vocals were recorded in Chicago by former members of the acclaimed Chicago Children’s Choir. Vasil himself is an alum of the choir and has worked with them many times since.
Vasil’s social media announcement also features photos of five other people, likely to be members of his backing choir. Using the Chicago-based choir singers for backing vocals is something Vasil will be able to replicate with the new Eurovision 2021 rules allowing pre-recorded backing vocals.
The song was recorded with a live symphonic orchestra at the FAMES studio in Skopje.
Vasil joins Ana Soklič in taking advantage of the new Eurovision rules to include a big gospel choir sound in his entry. Ana Soklič debuted her gospel-infused single “Amen” on Saturday.
Vasil’s “Here I Stand” will be released on 11 March
And fans won’t have long to wait until they can get a first listen to “Here I Stand”. Vasil has confirmed the song will be released on Thursday 11 March — just ten days time.
Vasil first graced the Eurovision stage in 2019 as a backing singer for Tamara Todevska, who went on to win the jury vote and finish seventh overall with the song “Proud”.
In 2020, Macedonian broadcaster MKRTV internally selected Vasil to represent the country as the main artist. His entry “You” was also internally selected. Unfortunately, due to the coronavirus pandemic, last year’s contest was cancelled and Vasil was unable to perform.
MKRTV has now selected him again for Eurovision 2021, where Vasil will finally get his chance to sing at the contest as the lead artist.
What do you think of the “Here I Stand” snippet? What sort of staging would work best with the song? Tell us your thoughts below!
This looks really promising from our country. Idk if we’ll qualify since we’re in the first semi final but it looks like a great song judging from the snippet
This year’s hot topic is gospel, as we see we’ve come from the Dark Side like Fallen Angels, and all artists are singing all about it to You, Amen!
I listened to the snippet. I read the article. I came to post something positive for Vasil. And before doing so I read the comments, and I wish I hadn’t. Really makes me wonder what is going wrong in the world at the moment, when even on wiwibloggs people can’t just comment about the song and get bogged down in so much bickering, negativity, and hateful nonsense. You are sucking the joy out of everything this year.
This makes me think of classical Queen-songs from the 70s / 80s. Might be promissing if the end result is as dynamic
Same! That was my first thought!
Can’t be worse than last year.
Or 2019….
oh yes it can, just wait for it…
It’s really obvious you had a problem with the country, not with their songs. You couldn’t be even more biased.
What a bunch of hateful and xenophobic bullpoop. “Paradox of the far left” says everything about you.
Well. I must say that I am looking forward to hear the whole song, based on the little snap
This sounds promising.
I don t like idea of pre recording backing vocalist, I think EBU make mistake and in future maybe EBU decide to lead singer can sing also on playback.
That’s never going to happen. Don’t worry.
They said Australia is guest in ESC 2015 and second time they will sang only if Australi won the contest in 2015. They got ticket to sing to 2023.
They said pre recorder backin vocals will be only in 2021.
Pre recorded backing vocals are being used in part due to Covid. My guess is that if delegations abuse it we’ll revert to live backing for 2022.
A compromise would be to insist on live backing, but to let delegations have two backing singers offstage, giving you 2 extra people who could be used for dancing.
Another gospel??
We alreday have Amen 2x…
Hallelujah!!
Ok, so “Here I stand and I can’t help it” is a famous quote of Martin Luther, which often is used when it comes to LGBTQ*-Groups within christianity. I wouldn’t be surprised if this turns out to be – next to the gospel choir – another religious inspired / motivated song.
Well Vasil is gay, so I highly doubt he’ll come with an evangelical preachy song.
I’m gay and Christian. Lol. Why can’t he be both?
That’s the point of this used quote from LGBTQ*-christians. It’s often interpreted as a ‘born this way’ and ‘god loves me as I am’-statement. Also I don’t see the highly anticipated seperation of people with other sexual orientations and beliefe itself. It’s not necessarily mutually exclusive. But that’s just a point of view.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t Ana Soklic openly lesbian?
So, it seems that the majority of the contest might be:
Nothing wrong with that, just an observation. 😉
Few songs with religious vibes bring me back to 1999 (Maria Magdalena, Journey to Jerusalem, Diamond of Night…).
I sometimes like a good spiritual song, but it mustn’t be preachy or judgmental.
But a serious question remains – To what degree can a song be about religion / politics and still be able to participate? Is there a direct guideline?
These were glorious days for Croatia back then.
1999 we had that kind of song, because contest was in Jerusalem city and Israel country. If we had contest in UK if UK won in 1998, we didn had that song Maria Magdalena or Journey to Jerusalem.
This year remind me more on ESC 1995, many slow, balllad song , only few was uptempo. And uptempo song had good result (if we had that uptempo song in 1994,1996 they would had worse result . France 1995 would flop in 1994 or 1996.
I was kind of hoping Vasil’s song would be from your category #3, but never mind, I’m just glad he’s back.
Finland falls into the sexy diva bops category.
Is it me or whenever this artist and North Macedonia are being mentioned here, we have a parade of “no, thanks” comments, even when the news about those two is unoffensive…
I mean, does North Macedonia has the bad rep per se or what?
Yeah, our neighbors in general don’t like us,bfor various reasons. Basically whoever shares a border with us, their governments pick up political points by painting us as an enemy that they’re protecting against (for mostly fabricated/ridiculous reasons). But also, I’m Macedonian and hate both of Vasil’s songs. I know this one isn’t out yet but from the snippet it looks like we’re getting trite lyrics, an unnecessary gospel choir and a preachy message. I wish our broadcaster would stop doing internal selections since only people with connections get sent (that’s why we got Tamara twice, her sister, and a pretty… Read more »
i am the one who liked your comment and i agree with what you say because it is the truth, not because you are hater..
Malta might have a gospel as well? Ofc we don’t know any details but it wouldn’t surprise me
There must be a spare gospel song doing the rounds since 2016?
I can’t help but think of Slavko gay @ss when i see this man lmao
Psycho
Call me old-fashioned, whatever you want, but a gospel choir with a white singer at the front feels so… unauthentic.
But I still prefer this preview over Ana’s.
North Macedonia loves doing this. To bad results, unsurprisingly. They did it in 2015. They were RnB singers, mind you. But your point still applies.
Right. Educate yourself, please. Gospel is not just black gospel. This is just the image embedded in a lot of people’s minds due to cinematography, although Sister Act is actually a good example.
Or a sea shanty from Armenia
As mentioned, Vasil and his back-up vocalists were a part of the same children’s choir when he was living in Chicago, IL as a refugee so I’m sure what they have is a lot more genuine.
Be careful you will get accused of being “racist” next
“It has a gospel choir”
WELL OF COURSE IT DOES
#religioussongcontest2021
gospel north macedonian choir, i mean it doesnt sound promising but lets see
Macedonia and gospel… I have to laugh. 😀
I’ll reserve judgement until I hear the song, but feels like the backing track will be doing an awful lot of the work.
Oh Lordi, hope he doesn’t pull another Daniel Kajmakoski (Macedonia 2015) on us.
Gospel choirs seem to be a pattern this year! I am not against them, they are pretty uplifting, specially in such hard times, but I am afraid that if similar songs are performed on the same semifinal, or even close to each other in the final running order… people will lose interest in the entire thing ._.
I think this was inevitable when it was announced pre-recorded backing vocals were permitted. It is a free-for-all. So it might improve the chances of something a little more stripped back.
The pandemic really hit some people in believing god. Yet it’s the science that saves us all. Again.
Are Ana and Vasil trying to convince us that we don’t need the Mamas or something? 😉
No no no no! I really liked his song last year but I don’t like this at all.
I have a feeling all those “religious gospel sounds”, “quirky adorable nerds” and “Salvador Sobral and Billie Eilish hybrids” may cancel each other out, and the winner may be someone who offers something different, refreshing. A bit like Jamala in 2016, who stood about among a sea of generic pop songs, or Salvador Sobral in 2017 who stood out in the sea of fireworks.
Maybe Poland and Armenia will surprise us positively !?
Do you mean Germany?!
Unfortunately he is the weakest of quirky nerds
Based of uniqueness in Eurovision, Barbara Pravi looks like this year’s Salvador Sobral.
I hope so! Her song is so unique. And 100% no one will do her genre.
Who said sf1 is gonna be strong??
Dude…it’s going to be the boring one with all these gospel-inspired songs
I believe only Russia,Romania,Lithuania or maybe Australia and Belgium could save this semi!
Slovenia and Macedonia that’s only 6 minutes of gospel. I think we’ll be fine
Um what, most of the songs that have been released are from semi 1 and many people have ranked those songs highly in their top lists and videos. Also, it was initially referred to as the stronger semi because countries that have done historically well and or continuing to do well eg Sweden, Russia, Cyprus, Norway, Malta etc are in the first semi. As for the gospel songs, there’s only 2 out of what 17,18 that are gospel like. Yes there probably will be more ballads added too but actually most of the songs in this semi are mid or… Read more »
Ha ha I don’t think we’ll be getting gospel or choirs from Belgium. Unless they are influenced by Love Shine A Light.
It’s really gross to read such ignorant comments about religion. Let people believe in what they want to believe. Y’all obviously never heard for respect.
These comments are really mild tho.. almost nobody’s hating on religion? The reaction of ‘too many religion songs’ in this years esc is exaggerated tho. We only have 2 amens and now this one song with gospel. El diablo is the typical euro bop and fallen angel is a pop love song at the end of the day.
I haven’t read a single comment saying “too many gay singers at Eurovision”, or “too many songs about sex”… but of course when it comes to God – here we are.
No one complains about too many gay singers or sex songs at Eurovision because there aren’t many. Unless you make personal assumptions on who’s gay or not.
Wrong page mama, wrong page.
Yes, you are right, hurting the feelings of religious people is 100% not the same thing as attacking people for their sexual orientation or something else that they can’t change. Sure, you can argue that it’s mean and unnecessary but come on. Nobody is being oppressed for being religious. At least not as a Christian in most European countries. In fact, for many centuries, it was the other way around. Also, I’ve totally read people complaining about there being too many LGBT songs on here. And these people usually are very homophobic. Most people I’ve seen talk about how there… Read more »
You can’t preach Free Speech just when you think it’s appropriate. But yes, absolutely Free Speech – but Free Speech shouldn’t be discriminatory or unkind.
Not really. All I said about Nina was that she went crazy on her Instagram to rat about being robbed. I didn’t attack any group or anyone based on their religion, gender, orientation or so – which you did.
The whole exhange is depressing, especially when so many people are intent on being disagreeable.
I think considering you are on a blog dedicated to Eurovision, that has been considered one of the very few mainstream homes for the LGBTQ+ community for decades, telling us to respect religion… is EXTREMELY IRONIC. To say the least.
I think you’re ignorant.
Yes, I don’t really have a problem with religion and music interfere. I have a much bigger problem with mixing politics with music
This sounds promising.
Oh but Benny I thought you loved El Diablo and frowned upon Gospel music???
Everyone in Europe became Jesus stans during the pandemic.
The authors are mostly American, actually.
I’m still waiting for that ‘winning’ eurovision song this year. If a better song doesn’t come I thinl this could be swedens year again if they chose Eric Saade.
Anyway I still have high expectations for a lot of countries! I think belgium could be a dark horse this year, even though hooverphonic is everything but liked by a large chunk of the esc community at the moment. Their new (or old) lead singer Geike Arnaert is a very promising singer.
Jeez, another religious song… But jury will only love the gospel one. He is smart for choosing that direction. At least the jury vote won’t be so bad.
Why won’t he go with Sudbina? I mean, he has to know it’s a better song than “Here I Stand”. What’s not clicking?
So you just basically said that “Here I stand” is not a very good song based on a snippet of a couple of seconds which only includes the backing vocals? Ok.
Don’t me give that snippet rhetoric. You can very much tell how the song is going to be from a 30 second snippet, especially the way songs are built nowadays (in terms of repetitiveness).
Sudbina sucked, sorry. I’m glad he’s not participating with that song.
Lol. It wasn’t even 30 seconds bruh. It was a few seconds of a wholebutt song. Wait till you listen to the whole song before you dismiss it.
Tbh, I’m TIRED of gospel choirs
Amen to that.
I’m also tired of self empowerment songs, the message always seems to be so flat..
Amen to that too
There’s literally no star quality about him. He is very average performer and also his behavior is very cringey. I really wish them the best but they might not stand out in the very hard Semi Final
Well I heard lots choir singers, but not Vasil!
is it too late for love? oooh
Wow.. This gonna be BOOM!!
Oh my god it’s a no
I will wait for the full song to make an actual judgment, but if I was just judging the clip and only the clip, it’s a no. I can’t say I’ve ever enjoyed Vasil’s music that much (apart from You, but I know I was in the minority – I cannot stand Patuvam or Sudbina, sorry) so I’m not very hopeful for this. I am willing and hoping to be pleasantly surprised.
um……ok?