From YouTube to YouTube for Russia

Peter Nalitch made an emotional performance at the rehearsal. Singing about a photograph of a lost love, he was holding a photograph in his right hand, looking at it with sad eyes. For the end of the song, a powerful wind machine set in. The presence of the wind machine surprised some journalists attending the rehearsal, since the tool is usually used for Scandinavian up-tempo entries – not Russian ballads with a strong touch of melancholy.

To attendees, the most striking feature of the performance was the artificial snow falling over the stage during the major part of the song. The snow-fall only stops in time for the strong wind in the end. With four musicians up front and two in the back, the snow is actually falling down in a thin veil between the drummer and keyboard player in the back and the rest of the band. Because of this, no performer ended up with the hair filled with pieces of paper snow this morning.

The stage in Telenor Arena is built with a backdrop made up of a wealth of lamps of different sizes. For the Russian song, they created a star-studded background, with many small white and purple lights.

This content is unfortunately no longer available

Peter Nalitch and his band conducted the press conference comfortably in good English. When asked what the song is about, Peter joked "I don't know", but then explained the theme of lost love. Peter also commented on the star-studded backdrop.

"We like the stars glittering in the back, it's very romantic and supports the mood of the lyrics."

Peter thinks that their particular style of musical, called Jolly Babury, will split populations in two across Europe.

"This is the biggest contest for popular songs, and we hope that our song is popular. I think there will be people in all countries who will like our song – and also people who won't."

This content is unfortunately no longer available

Peter Nalitch became famous after he published a music video on YouTube which he made himself for the song Guitar. In about a month after he did it, 70,000 persons had already watched it. The Russian users of LiveJournal were sending each other the link to the song and the number of views was increasing by thousands every day. That brought Peter fame all over Russia. After his first concert, Peter gathered a group of musicians with whom he gave  several more concerts in the winter of 2008. The group named themselves MKPN. In the summer of 2009, MKPN went to support the Russian sport teams at the UEFA European Cup and the Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing. That was followed by releasing their first album and DVD of their Moscow concerts, making them established artists.