SongHunt 2020, our poll series to find the best non-winning national final song of the year, has come to an end: “La-ley-la” by CHАKRАS from the Belarusian has won the grand final!

Based on the votes of our chatters in the #esc chat and supplemented by our editors’ choices, a total of 96 songs took part in the eight SongHunt heats between January and March, followed by four quarter-finals and two semi-finals. The poll for the 12-song final was open for the past week, and the results from that were combined with our chatters’ votes in tonight’s special live chat event to get the following final ranking:

1. CHАKRАS – La-ley-la (Belarus)
2. Dotter – Bulletproof (Sweden)
3. Sara Bajraktari – Ajër (Albania)
4. Erika Vikman – Cicciolina (Finland)
5. Anna Bergendahl – Kingdom Come (Sweden)
6. Indira – You Will Never Break My Heart (Croatia)
7. Iva – Oculis videre (Iceland)
8. Olga Lounová – Dark Water (Czech Republic)
9. Didrik & Emil – Out Of Air (Norway)
10. We All Poop – All The Blood (Positive Song Actually) (Czech Republic)
11. Paul Rey – Talking In My Sleep (Sweden)
12. Tone Damli – Hurts Sometimes (Norway)

This year’s SongHunt was additionally complicated by the fact that ESC 2020 was cancelled right in the middle of the competition, but we were delighted to see that the level of interest remained as high as always – everyone clearly wanted their say in which song was most “robbed”, even if it turns out they wouldn’t have made it to Rotterdam anyway.

“La-ley-la” duly follows in the footsteps of “Nefelibata” by MNTHA (2015), “Helpless” by The Hardkiss (2016), “Petale” by Instinct (2017), “Fără tine” by Dora Gaitanovici (2018) and “Dua ta besoj” by Artemisa Mithi & Febi Shkurti to become our sixth annual SongHunt winner! You can check out the full results of the entire SongHunt 2020 season if you want to see how we got from FiK to here.

And to conclude, here’s the reprise of the winning song and performance. Many congratulations to CHAKRAS and thanks to everyone who voted in our chat and on our website during all the rounds. Even if next year’s national final season looks to be a bit more scaled-back than usual, there will still be plenty of finals to watch, so there will be a SongHunt 2021 – we’ll see you there!

Follow us:

• 265 Followers
• 2.2k Followers
• 64 Followers
• 27 Followers

SongHunt 2020, our competition to find the most robbed national finalist of the 2020 Eurovision season, has reached the grand final. 12 songs remain in the hunt for victory, and the poll is now open for your votes – but before you vote, we’d like to introduce you to each of the finalists in turn!

Anna Bergendahl – Kingdom Come
Following on from last year’s “Ashes To Ashes”, the Melodifestivalen comeback queen cemented her return to the scene this year with the meticulously staged “Kingdom Come”. Despite being tipped by many, it wasn’t quite enough to win her the ticket to Rotterdam – but there’s always some kind of Swedish presence in the SongHunt final and Anna Bergendahl duly takes her place among our 12 contenders this year.

We All Poop – All The Blood (Positive Song Actually)
For a few months it looked like we were going to get a televised Czech final for the first time since their return to the contest, but in the end it was another internet-only selection. Why change a successful formula, after all? Sadly that means we’ll never get to know how We All Poop (worst band name ever?) would have translated the impactful music video for their Cooper Temple Clause-esque “All The Blood” into a live setting – but that hasn’t stopped it from sailing through to the final of SongHunt 2020.

Didrik & Emil – Out Of Air
We were blessed with two wildly different performances of “Out Of Air” – the first featuring a weirdly near-romantic vibe between the Solli-Tangen brothers and a choreography involving junior versions of themselves (which obviously wouldn’t have been allowed at ESC), and this staging from the final with a rather more sober, light entertainment take on the song. The latter is what got Didrik and Emil into SongHunt in the first place, and that journey has led them all the way to our final.

Erika Vikman – Cicciolina
SongHunt is essentially a project to find the most “robbed” national final song of the season, and if you ask many fans, they’ll tell you that “Cicciolina” is that song. The ingredients for a classic fan failure at the national final stage are always the same: you need a heavily hyped entry like this one, yes, but you also need some evil juries (ideally foreign) to throw a spanner in the works, and a fairly unspectacular song to reap the rewards instead of the big loud fanfave. No wonder Erika Vikman has made it this far in SongHunt – it may be the only thing she wins this year.

Iva – Oculis videre
Dutch-Icelandic singer Íva Marín Adrichem, better known as Iva, got a lot of the early hype ahead of this year’s Söngvakeppnin until she was inevitably swept away by the Daði tidal wave. Nevertheless, the unusual and haunting “Oculis videre” still has its fair share of fans, and who’s to say it wouldn’t have been just as clever a choice for ESC?

Dotter – Bulletproof
Never mind the fact that it was one of the fan favourites to win Melodifestivalen – you know you’ve really made it when you’re the subject of a meme, and Dotter’s “Bulletproof” did that in quite some style. Away from all that, it was perhaps surprising to see Dotter only just scraping into the SongHunt final. Will she find her feet here, or is this her glass ceiling?

Sara Bajraktari – Ajër
An Albanian song won the previous edition of SongHunt, so we’re always on the lookout for strong contenders when Festivali i Këngës kicks off the national final season. Sara Bajraktari got a strong response from the local audience on the first night of FiK 58, and our chatters were similarly enthusiastic by the time the final night rolled around – voting her straight into the first heat of SongHunt 2020, from where she has progressed all the way to our final!

CHАKRАS – La-ley-la
On a purely selfish note, we’re delighted to see “La-ley-la” in the SongHunt final purely because it was the song that received the biggest average score of the season in our chat during its respective national final. There is definitely such a thing as “chatroom taste” over in #esc, so it was perhaps no surprise that an angular, difficult and downright weird number like this would meet with our approval – but seeing it get this deep into the SongHunt process is very satisfying indeed!

Tone Damli – Hurts Sometimes
Amid the craziness that the national final season throws at us, there’s always room for a nice, sensible, grown-up song. Cue Tone Damli, previously best known to ESC fans for narrowly (ha-ha) losing out to Alexander Rybak in the 2009 Norwegian final. We’ll never know if “Hurts Sometimes” could have secured the ticket to Rotterdam had it not been for the app failure in the first round of this year’s Melodi Grand Prix, but Tone Damli can satisfy herself with still being in the running for the SongHunt crown.

Paul Rey – Talking In My Sleep
Melodifestivalen tradition dictates that there have to be one or two “sleepers” – songs that take their time to make an impact on the public, eventually reaching the final via the Andra Chansen round only to suddenly develop into contenders for the crown. FELIX SANDMAN was widely tipped to play that role again this year, having done the same in 2018. Instead, it was the likes of Anis don Demina and Paul Rey who picked up the slack. The former’s “Vem e som oss” did better at MF, but the latter’s “Talking In My Sleep” is the one that has got deepest in our competition, making it all the way to the final of SongHunt 2020.

Olga Lounová – Dark Water
Another one from the internet-only Czech selection, it would have been interesting to see a live staging for Olga’s dark song about dark waters. (We’re betting it would have been dark.) In the absence of that, we’ll have to be satisfied with this video for the studio version and a healthy dose of imagination. Either way, the song is a good ‘un and that’s why it’s made it this far!

Indira – You Will Never Break My Heart
It’s loud, it’s in your face, it’s Croatian. Our chatters can rarely resist that formula, and the wider SongHunt voting public have been no less kind to Indira and her mildly bonkers “You Will Never Break My Heart”. It’s a perfect closer to our playlist, and if nothing else, it certainly ups the average BPM of this year’s SongHunt final.

And that’s it – now that you’ve met our 12 finalists, it’s time for you to vote!

Follow us:

• 265 Followers
• 2.2k Followers
• 64 Followers
• 27 Followers

It’s time for the grand final of SongHunt 2020!

Which song should have won its preselection this year? Who was the most robbed national finalist of all? Our annual SongHunt has been underway since earlier this year with the aim of finding out – and now we’ve reached the grand final!

Our final features 12 songs that qualified from the semi-finals. Your task is simple: You have between one and three votes to give to your favourite song(s)! That means you can vote for your one big favourite and make sure it gets a boost, or you can spread your love around several songs if you can’t quite decide. It’s up to you!

The poll closes at 23:59 CET on Saturday 16th May, and we’ll be crowning the winner in the #esc chat on Sunday evening. As always, a video playlist can be found below the poll if you need a reminder, or you can check out our detailed introduction to all 12 finalists.

Want to know more? You can see the full qualification list for SongHunt 2020 here!

Follow us:

• 265 Followers
• 2.2k Followers
• 64 Followers
• 27 Followers