Norway's Alexander Rybak returns to the Eurovision stage

01 May 2018 at 11:54 CEST

First Rehearsal Norway Thomas Hanses

The first round of rehearsals for the second Semi-Final participants kicked off with the return of former winner Alexander Rybak from Norway. After telling us he was in love with a fairytale, now he sets out to teach us how to write a song.

Alexander Rybak was born in Minsk, Belarus, on the 13th of May, 1986. In the early nineties, his family moved to Norway's capital city, Oslo. He became a household name across Europe after winning the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest for Norway with the song Fairytale with the highest recorded score in the history of the contest at the time. Fairytale went on to top the music charts around Europe.

Alexander Rybak won Melodi Grand Prix (MGP), the Norwegian national selection for the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest, meaning a former winner of the competition would be back to try to win it for the second time.

READ MORE: Alexander's participant profile.

That's How You Write A Song was written and composed by Alexander Rybak himself. For his performance in Lisbon, Alexander Rybak starts by sitting on stage playing "air instruments" while explaining how to write a song. The instruments then appear on screen before Alexander is joined by a backing group of four singers and dancers. There's a break in the disco beat of That's How You Write A Song that Rybak uses to play his violin, this time a real one. On stage he is wearing black trousers, a dark blue shirt and a blue jacket that he takes off during his routine.

After his rehearsal, Eurovision.tv caught up with the Norwegian singer: "I am so happy to be part of Eurovision again. But now that I've finished the first rehearsal, so much weight has fallen off my shoulders. We were smiling all the time and finally we can enjoy the results of our hard work."

Norway will participate in the Second Semi-Final on Thursday, the 10th of May.