In his first rehearsal, Stefan Filipović, the singer representing Montenegro in the First Semi-Final of the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest, performed in leisure clothes. He was supported on stage by four female backing dancers wearing red gloves, which are a key feature in the elaborate stage choreography: In the middle of the song, the dancers start to caress the singer's face with their hands. During this first rehearsal, everybody looked and sounded very confident on stage.
Stefan Filipović was chosen to represent Montenegro in the First Semi-Final of the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest by televoting out of six singers. After that, an expert commission asked several well-known composers and lyricists to send in songs for Stefan. In the end, they picked Zauvijek Volim Te, which was written by Grigor Koprov and Ognen Nedelkovski, both of which are from FYR Macedonia. Stefan Filipović had already taken part in two national finals for the Eurovision Song Contest before: He reached the third place in the national final of Serbia and Montenegro in 2005, and he came second in the national final of Montenegro in 2007.
In the press conference, the delegation of Montenegro emphasized that they were very satisfied with the first rehearsal. A special welcome was given to the backing dancers, who are all from Croatia. Some of them had already backed the Slovenian representative in the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest, Alenka Gotar. When Stefan Filipović was asked why he decided not to sing his song in English but in his native language, he replied that boosting his career in the countries of South-Eastern Europe was more important to him than achieving a top placing in the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest.
