Anastasiya loves Belarus and Eurovision

Anastasiya Vinnikova was excited for the second rehearsal of Belarus. Not only she loves Belarus, but she loves Eurovision too as she is enjoying her stay in Düsseldorf. "I like all the happenings here, really cool!" she says.

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The composer Eugene Oleinik wrote the music and co-wrote the lyrics with Svetlana Geraskova. On the first rehearsal it was Anastasiya who talked about it and now it was Eugene who explained to us backstage the meaning of his song.

"The main idea was to write a song about our country and how we love it. I hope that everybody will understand that every man must love his country. You can sing 'I love Germany' or 'I love Belgium' as well. This is a song about the feeling, not about the country. It's about what we have inside."

The song is the result of a major change. A very different song was originally entered for Belarus, but it transpired that it had been performed in public before the first date allowed, which made it a breach against the rules.

This was secretly welcomed by Eugene."Our television company chose that song for the competition, and it was a surprise for me, I was against it. Thank God, someone put it on the Internet so we had to change it!" he reveals.

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There were no changes from the first rehearsal, they performed with the glitter microphone stands, although no pyro works were on display for this rehearsal.

The press conference

In her second press conference, Anastasiya confirmed that she has just started her music career and considers the Eurovision Song Contest a brilliant debut.

Regarding the rehearsal, the team from Belarus is already satisfied with how it went today and confirmed that the fire show will be back for the semifinal.

 Waving our flags on stage would be too patriotic maybe
 

After she was chosen to represent her country she became a well known face and now there are plans to release her debut album, of which she already completed the recording of five songs.

As he told us backstage, the composer explained the reasons why the song was changed and added that "the new I Love Belarus was written in three days".

The head of the delegation declared that they want to win as much as every other participant and that they would be ready to host the contest, for example at Minsk Arena.

Vinnikova closed her press conference with a beautiful rendition of Killing Me Softly along with the guitar.

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