The making of Eurovision Home Concerts
22 May 2020 at 12:05 CESTAbout a week after the cancellation of Eurovision Song Contest 2020 in Rotterdam, the idea of creating Eurovision Home Concerts was set and ready to be put into action!
The idea
Each episode would feature artists who have been part of the Eurovision family over the years, including the artists from 2020. Each artist could perform their own song and, if they want, a cover version of another fan-favourite Eurovision hit.
Artists were contacted through email, Facebook and Instagram to take part, and quickly, a long list of Eurovision participants came together. Many of these artists responded with great enthusiasm; check out some of the exciting snapshots from the first 7 episodes below:
The first episode
On 3 April, we introduced the first episode of Eurovision Home Concerts on our YouTube channel.
The episode featured Ryan O'Shaughnessy, Ireland's choice for 2018, who was up first singing his song Together, as well as Daði og Gagnamagnið's Think About Things (Iceland 2020). He was followed by Denmark's Rasmussen, who took the stage in Lisbon in 2018, Tamara Todevska from North Macedonia, who won the jury vote in Tel Aviv 2019 and Montenegro's Slavko Kalezic, who closed the show with his 2017 entry Space and a cover of Eleni Foureira's Fuego.
Slavko was the first one to send in his contribution to the show. "I really wanted to make sure our Eurovision fans will be entertained! Let's make people forget about this crazy and messy period! We will overcome this!" Right after the show, we received another message from Slavko:
We slayed it!
He wasn't the only one excited about his performance during Eurovision Home Concerts. His fans also expressed their support for his lively appearance:
Over 60 acts participated
As soon as we told the artists about the Eurovision Home Concerts, they were eager to create something special. Estonia's Uku Suviste made a couple of music videos: he spent a lot of time in the planning process and many calls were made back and forth to facilitate an amazing performance. You can watch Uku's performances, including his collaboration with Eurovision 2009 winner Alexander Rybak who played the violin during his performance of What Love Is, in episode 3:
Keeping distancing restrictions in mind
Besides many calls with delegations on how to come up with the best Home Concert possible, other more practical questions came up as well: What can be done during a period with movement restrictions, for example. ROXEN (Romania 2020) wanted to make projections on a wall, Ana Soklič (Slovenia 2020) wanted to record in her 'backyard' by a lake in her home town and Arilena Ara's (Albania 2020) team spent 3 weeks getting all the right permissions and informing the police that they would record by the Mother Teresa square in central Tirana. All this was completed while keeping the COVID-19 regulations of each country in mind.
It was a puzzle for many acts to record their performances, especially for those in countries in complete lockdown. Some of them couldn't go outside at all, so they had to get creative with everything they had at home. Being a group made the challenge even bigger and some delegations had to turn down the request to join because of it. The Mamas (Sweden 2020) took on the challenge, though, and recorded their songs from 2 different cities in Sweden.
Check out episode 6, including Arilena Ara and The Mamas, below:
Getting creative
Irish participant Lesley Roy got creative when she couldn't go outside and eagerly decorated her New York flat - multiple times - for the recordings. After the episode, she told us she was, "very happy and sees big hope for the future with perhaps moving back to Sweden to record more music in this city".
Watch all the episodes
Check out the links below to watch all the episodes of the Eurovision Home Concerts. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube Channel, as we'll publish recaps of each episode in the coming days.
- Episode 1, including Ryan O'Shaugnessy, Rasmussen, Tamara Todevska and Slavko Kalezic.
- Episode 2, including Daði, Montaigne, Vasil, Aksel, Gjon's Tears, Leonora and Jamala.
- Episode 3, including Jeangu Macrooy, Uku Suviste, Hurricane, Ulrikke, Lesley Roy, Lake Malawi, Victor Crone, Jalisse, Sergey Lazarev and Helena Paparizou.
- Episode 4, including Damir Kedžo, Elisa, VICTORIA, Stefania, Ana Soklič, Pænda, KEiiNO and Eugent Bushpepa.
- Episode 5, including Tom Leeb, Senhit, VAL, Zibbz, Samantha Tīna, Sandro, ROXEN, Michael Schulte and Ben Dolic.
- Episode 6, including The Mamas, Hera Björk, Efendi, Arilena Ara, Lea Sirk, Jedward, Michele, Benny Cristo, James Newman, Blas Cantó, Paula Seling & Ovi, Suzy and SuRie.
- Episode 7, including Go_A, Eimear Quinn, Imri Ziv, Dami Im, Diodato, Secret Garden, Yohanna, MELOVIN and Dana.
And that's a wrap on the first season of Eurovision Home Concerts! We hope you enjoyed watching the Eurovision participants singing from their homes all across the world.