After accepting open applications, Azerbaijan has made a decision. Azeri broadcaster İctimai Television has internally selected The Voice of Azerbaijan winner Nadir Rüstemli to represent his country at Eurovision 2022.
The official reveal came as part of the morning TV show Sabahın xeyir, Azərbaycan (Good morning, Azerbaijan).
Nadir Rüstəmli to represent Azerbaijan at Eurovision 2022
Azerbaijan’s man in Turin will be Nadir Rüstəmli. He’s a familiar face to fans of Azeri talent shows. Less than one month ago he was crowned the champion of The Voice of Azerbaijan.
During his appearance on Sabahın xeyir, Azərbaycan on Wednesday, Nadir was asked a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? style question of “Who will represent Azerbaijan in the Eurovision Song Contest this year?”. The last of the four answers posed to Nadir just happened to be his own name.
After choosing himself, it was revealed that this was the correct answer. Nadir’s initial expression was one of surprise, but later jubilation.
But while Nadir has been selected, his song for Eurovision 2022 is yet to be selected.
Azerbaijan’s Head of Delegation Isa Malikov, who was also present at Sabahın xeyir, Azərbaycan, confirmed that more than 300 songs were submitted to the broadcaster. He said, “As always, we try to look for a beautiful and professional song, regardless of genre. We will pay attention to the degree to which it will match the voice and style of the singer. The selection process will be completed in the second week of March and the song will be announced then.”
Who is Azerbaijan’s Eurovision 2022 singer Nadir Rüstemli?
A 22-year-old singer born in Salyan, Nadir came to fame on series two of The Voice of Azerbaijan, which ended less than one month ago. The singer was coached by Azerbaijan’s Eurovision 2011 winner Eldar Gasimov, who led his prodigy to victory.
Nadir had plenty of opportunities to prove his Eurovision skills on The Voice. He delivered performances of Duncan Laurence’s Eurovision 2019 winning song “Arcade”. The song let Nadir show off his vocal range — and do some interpretive dance.
Nadir also unleashed his rock side with another Eurovision song.
He performed maNga’s 2010 runner-up song “We Could Be the Same”, including both super high falsetto and powerful rock vocals.
What do you make of Azerbaijan’s choice? Are you excited to see Nadir Rüstemli head to Eurovision 2022? Let us know in the comments below.
Off-topic but interesting thing how Azerbaijani sounds so much like Turkish to my foreign uncultured ears lol
anyways good luck to Nadir
Azéri Language is a Turk Language. So yes it‘s similar to our ears. It’s like Dutch and flamish
His voice isn’t good at all, too pitchy and flat. Also the pronunciation abilities need to improve a lot!
His voice isn’t that strong, I’m surprised that he has won The Voice (Azerbaijan’s). Not expecting much to be honest, sorry!
Swedish songwriters are getting to work as we speak
That cover of We Could Be The Same is pretty good. Hopefully the song he will sing in May will have heavy ethnic elements because it’s pretty evident that’s where his strength is.
He has a nice voice but he struggles enunciating English. I also think it’s too soon for him to go, his career’s just taking off and the way he was announced as Azerbuyjan’s representative was rather awkward, at least he was happy with the news 🙂
Wait, so they did not ask him whether he wants to participate? They just surprised him and now he has to go? He seems happy, but what if he didn’t want to? Anyway, his reaction was cute, I bet it’s going to be a meme.
When the dictatorship decides it’s your turn to go, then it’s your turn to go.
You can’t go to Eurovision if you don’t apply for the internal selection. Just mere ignorance of this question and ridiculous reply to it, really kills soul.
Some of the Voice finalists applied to represent Azerbaijan and Nadir was one of them. He really wanted to go Eurovision, and the last time when I had an interview with him, I asked him about Eurovision (as in Azerbaijan we really wanted him to represent us), he said he was waiting for results.
Just call them Azerbuyjan or Azerbribejan. Both fit better.
Or Azerbabejan
2014 – 22nd place
2015 – 12nd place
2016 – 17th place
2017 – 14th place
2018 – NQ
2021 – 20th place
And you still say we buy votes?
This guy has a fantastic voice but you can see that he really struggles along some of the English enunciation. There could be serious potential if they would just give him a song in his native language. The best part of these two videos is when he dipped out of English when covering maNga. Last year was enough proof that linguistic authenticity is loved by Eurovision fans if the song is good…
Azerbaijan , always comes up with something good. Looking forward to the song. One of the last to be chosen i guess in mid-March.
I have a feeling no “Dream Team” or Melfest producers are gonna be able to save this from being utterly forgettable.
Not impressed but let’s see. At least they send a male singer…
I hope they don’t force him to sing in English PLEASE. Stop sending Azeri singers singing in English when they cannot even speak English at all.
I think Efendi or Aisel they could speak English?
No, Efendi did not speak English and she always had someone translate for her. Remember the TIX romance and how she wanted to learn English to communicate with him? Very few Eurovision contestants from Azerbaijan spoke English (Arash, 2011 duo, 2017 and maybe 2018)
+ Sabina Babayeva and Samra
Yes, Samra is fluent in english tio!
I think that Efendi spoke English in some of her stories on Instagram, I thought that she could speak English, but was not sure and rather spoke her native language.
I also assume that she is able understand a large part of it, but that she isn’t proficient enough to speak it in longer conversations. She nailed the accent in her songs, though.
Aysel Teymurzadeh, who sang with arash in 2008, speaks english fluently. She did her high school in USA.
“Aysel Teymurzadeh, who sang with arash in 2008, speaks english fluently. She did her high school in USA.” And I don’t understand why people downvoted this reply where the user doesn’t express his/her opinions, the user just gives a mere fact about Aysel. People are sick?
How trustworthy statement you think that is, even the year is wrong. Lol, people just want reliable source.
Dude, what I am gonna write here really kills my soul… But it seems I have to spoon-feed smb. The conversation wasn’t about participation years. It’s about which participant speaks English. So years are irrelevant in this context. It doesn’t change the fact that Aysel did her high school in the USA. Okay? The fact.
Dino wanted a source, even the year of the participation was wrong. Oh btw, Lesley Roy (Ireland 2016) spoke croatian – a fact!
I am not your Google. If you want the source move your fingers and search for it. Dear, three year old nephew…
looking forward to seeing the song
Flop lmfao
I need Efendi 🙁
She’ll mime anything these days!
You don’t know that. Maybe he’ll send a self assured queer anthem bop with an eastern dance part in it like Israel this year.
My problem with these freshly new ‘The Voice’ winners is not that they don’t have a great voice, range or capability, but that they often lack creativity or their own style that makes them stand out on a Eurovision stage. They lack a clear vision or self-awareness of what kind of artist they want to be. However, Duncan came from The Voice without having produced any song before so this can go both ways. Let’s hope he brings something original and not just a ballad any artist could sing.
Duncan didn’t came directly from the voice though. He came until the ‘battle round’, followed a music study and did some of his own songwriting and then he appeared on eurovision with his own produced song 5 years later.
The five years later is the key. To many times these singing show contestants are hit new talents that fade from the music scene once the next season of the show starts. Duncan stayed relevant on the music scene well after he was off the TV show.
So true.
well Azerbaijan does not give freedom to decide on the creativity of their song and staging as they almost always buy the songs and the choreography/staging direction from foreign teams.
Meh…..
A good looking guy with a nice voice. All they need is a strong song
The other names in the Who wants to be a millionaire game, were they fake names or are they actually real singers from Azerbaijan? Maybe they were also in the running for eurovision 2022?
2 of them (Leyla Izzetova and Hidayat) wanted to represent Azerbaijan indeed.
So do Azerbaijan just pick their singer then wait for Melfest to be finished to see what Swedish songwriters are available to whip something up in 2-3 days for them?
300 songs are already given to ITV, they have to choose a genre for Nadir’s style.
He has a good voice but he conveys no emotion, his Arcade cover is just lifeless. I’m also not wowed by his version of “We could be the same”. It’s like he has no clue what he is singing and what the songs are meant to convey.
Let’s wait and see…
This could be Azerbaijan’s nadir lol
Well…
Well it seems like he does like Eurovision, so yay for him 😀
Though he definitely needs to either work on his pronunciation or just sing in Azerbaijani, because his English in these videos isn’t it 🙁
He needs a good ballad or a pop opera like Zero Gravity I think. I didn’t like his version of We could be the same. but Arcade was pretty good
A nice surprise would be to give him a song in azerbaijani, his english pronunciation has issues
Welcome to ESC, Nadir. 🙂
I am hoping for something professional, but not pretentious. Sometimes, both Armenia and Azerbaijan can polish their entries to the point of feeling artificial. I want something that comes from a genuine place, no matter if it’s in English or Azeri.
The difference of course being Azerbaijan doesn’t actually polish anything. They hire Europeans to do the polishing and stamp their flag on it and call it a day.
Chill buddy. I understand you love to hate on everything that is related to Azerbaijan(from its government to it people), but Nadir’s song is still not released. Yet, I’ve seen at least 3 comments of you hating on Nadir (like you did with Efendi, Chingiz and all the other Azeri participants in the last few years).
You understand correctly.
Who stops you from doing the same?
I mean it is our entry and we can choose it however we want. Is it any of your business? Or why does it make you so aggressive? Do we spend your money?
I think Ron spends his days and nights expressing his hate and frustration with Azerbaijan. So in sync with the Eurovision sprit.
As in synch with Eurovision spirit as the Azeri delegation and broadcaster who had commentators talking non-stop while the Armenian singer was on stage singing among other violations.
Is there any correlation between how late a song is released and how well it does it Eurovision. I don’t remember it even being this bad 50% of the songs coming out in the space of a few days doesn’t actually help anything.
Toy was among the last three songs released that year. Only Teardrops was among the first few. I don’t think it actually plays a part.
France and Italy (especially France) were all announced quite early and they were the top2 last year. People forget that a huge chunk of the audience doesn’t really listen to the songs before the contest anyway, so when a song is announced isn’t as important as some fans like to pretend it is
France was selected 5 weeks before Italy, but at least 10 songs came after Italy, mostly from internal choices
I hope Azerbaijan’s song this year will at least partly be composed/written/produced by Azerbaijanis. The singer this year not having established a brand yet when it comes to releases makes me doubtful in that regard, but I’ll wait and see. Eurovision could be a great platform for Azerbaijani musicians to get their music heard internationally, it’s a pity that Ictimai seems not to have fostered that potential fully yet. Eurovision watchers might get a false perception of Azerbaijani music based on most of their Eurovision songs. I understand that it can be cheaper and more comfortable to look for songs… Read more »
Based on these two videos, I’m not impressed. Also has pronunciation troubles.
Yeah kinda surprised he’s a season winner.
Good luck to him though
I don’t like his take on “Arcade” and “We could be the same”. 🙁
After listening to these I really hope they don’t give him a song in English. That’s an instant flop.
I just hope that the song is in Azerbaijani, or at the very least with parts in Azerbaijani.
you already know it won’t be
But one can still hope.