This year’s Cypriot song ‘Alter Ego’ by the band Minus One has qualified in the first semi-final to this month’s Eurovision Song Contest, in Stockholm. This year’s entry, our favourite Cypriot rockers have certainly made Cypriots very proud with qualifying outright, very well deserved victory this was.
Surely it was nerve-wracking until we learnt their fate…
Just at the point when host Måns Zelmerlöw gave us the last couple of qualifiers ‘And the ninth finalist is Cyprus!’ The boy’s alongside the lovely Evi Papamichael Head of the Cypriot Delegation reacting with absolute euphoria, waving our flag.
”They called us second-last so we almost got a heart attack. I think if we really win this, they will probably name an airport after us in Cyprus”, Minus One jokingly reacted to the post-Semi-Final press conference, which found out their second-half draw to this Saturday’s live final night. You will see our Cyprus song, jostling with 14th position in the running order of things…
The impressive group Minus One and the up-tempo track ‘Alter Ego’ went through the first semi-final Top 10 qualifiers (out of 18 countries competing). They will be joined by Russia’s Sergey Lezarev (his song ‘Your the Only One’ being penned by Greek Dimitris Kontopoulos) Armenia, Hungary, Netherlands, Austria, Malta, Czech Republic, Croatia, Azerbaijan).
The Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades reacting on twitter to Cyprus qualifying, congratulates group on their huge result in the competition. His tweet read as follows ‘#CYP @MinusCy you rock! Congratulations and Good Luck in the Final @Eurovision’.
The track was co-written by Minus One and Thomas G:son (he composed ‘Euphoria’ which was Swedish winning entry in 2012). The involvement of the Swedish producer highlights the Cypriot ambition to impress at this competition.
If you have yet to listen to our song… it’s a strong rocky-pop tune with a light-edgy feel to your Eurovision song but still radio-friendly appealing. With a quite good melody, really catchy chorus at first listening, it’s pretty effective, and incredibly solid type of Cypriot entry flying our flag, for our country’s performance…
The pop-rock band, which is made up of five members will be looking to lead Cyprus to their best ever finish in Eurovision history.
Vocalist, Francois Micheletto, will be assisted by fellow band members Harrys Pari, Costantinos Amerikanos, Antonis Loizides and Chris J, who will be collectively playing the drums and guitar.
The consummate professionals sold the song really very well with very slick staging, special effects and pyro fireworks adding to the song’s visually good performance. The staging, complete with cages, strobe lighting, ‘black & white’ screen shots, sharp camera angles and cuts, and digital wolfs appearing, during the song’s climatic finish… which forced you bluntly and very nicely to have this down as a very memorable song and act, at voting time.
Lead-vocalist Francois at one point is literally ‘howling’, emphasising the ‘howling in the moonlight’ parts of the song’s chorus, gave it really fun value. This performance by the band gave us a really epic and captivating feel, surely one of the most effective and exciting by far Cypriot stages in this competition for years.
The Artistic Director, Sacha Jean-Baptiste (she formerly staged Eurovision victorious winning entry ‘Euphoria’) was the very creativity behind helping to visualise the song’s concept on the stage of the Ericsson Globe Arena.
The CyBc internally selected the group last November, to be this year’s representative, clearly, impressed by the pop-rock outfit at last year’s Cypriot national stages.
These likeable Cypriot boys had taken time to visit our LGR studios before the workload of Eurovision week, telling us they felt proud to fly our flag, privileged and extremely honoured to be given the chance this year.
You can give your support to our Cyprus entry, by catching the Eurovision Song Contest Final on Saturday 14th May, which airs on BBC 1, at 8pm. We hope to see our Cypriot flag, flying rightfully to the top parts of the scoreboard.
LGR want to wish Minus One and our Cyprus song the best of luck in the competition.
