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Azerbaijan picks Safura for Oslo, but no song yet!

02 March 2010 at 20:15 CET

The finalists of the Azerbaijani national selection were chosen exactly a month ago, read all about it in our article about the Azerbaijani semi-final. In the meantime, their national broadcaster, iTV, decided they would all need new songs. So, a total of four different entries were chosen and Milk & Kisses, Safura and Maryam Shabanova could perform three each.

So, the three finalists were set to perform three out of the songs Drip Drop (written by Stefan Örn and Sandra Bjurman), Under My Skin (by Stefan Örn and Phil Anquetil), Soulless (by Anders Lundström) and Cancelled (by Stefan Örn, Negin, Random). 

Safura performed Drip Drop, Under My Skin and Soulless, Maryam the same songs and Milk& Kisses performed Drip Drop, Under My Skin and Cancelled.

And the winner is...

When the participants all had done that on the stage set in the Batu Palace in Baku, the jury, which consisted of people with impressive backgrounds - see for yourself in our article about the Azerbaijani final - had to take a decision. But until they did their hard work, we saw several interval acts, including their last year's participant (or half of it!) Aysel who also sung the entry Always.

The tension was turned up a notch and even more and then, it was time to reveal who would carry the Land of Fire's torch in Oslo. It was Safura to win but her song will be chosen on the 19th of March. Congratulations! 

According to the Head of Azerbaijani Delegation, Adil Kerimli, the jury, all four songs presented during the national final were outstanding and performed very strongly, so the jury decided to scrutinize the professional studio recordings of the songs prior to choosing the winner.

Long preparations for Safura!

Safura will now go to Ukraine for a training period and preparation for the album recording. After that Safura will travel to Sweden to record an album with Swedish partners who will participate in the album recording. Tentatively in two weeks Azerbaijani representative will be back to Kiev again to shoot the music video for the entry and work on the staging for the Eurovision Song Contest. You can get to know her a little bit in the video below:

    

Who is she?

Safura is only 17 years old but her spirit is strong and she is committed enough to succeed. Her father is a painter and her mother is a pianist and a fashion designer.

Thanks to her parents Safura started to show an extreme interest for fashion since early childhood. She showed her growing talent in fashion design when she was working on the very first stage outfits, with her mother's help.

Surely Safura’s main talent is music and her true life’s passion is singing. She started to sing at the age of three. At six she had a first stage performance. And ever since then she always is trying out in different competitions. She is a winner of Azerbaijani talent show Yene Ulduz which is analog of world-famous Pop Idol show. 

Safura graduated from musical school where she played the violin, though she always dreamed about playing the saxophone. And if you want something very bad, you go ahead and do it. So now Safura is the only female celebrity in Azerbaijan who can play this tough instrument!

Safura is a huge fan of a Twilight saga. She's read all of Stefany Mayers’ books. She adores Robert Pattison who is playing the handsome vampire Edward. Maybe Safura is singing about him? Go figure!

She will now follow the footsteps of Aysel and Arash who finished third last year at the Eurovision Song Contest with their Always.