Valentina Monetta to represent San Marino

San Marino are amongst one of the last countries to announce their entry for Europe's Favourite TV Show, but today they announced that the Sammarinese singer, Valentina Monetta will fly the flag for the microstate in Baku.

On Friday16th March at 21:40 CET there will be a television programme, where there will be an interview with the artist, as well as an opportunity to listen to the chosen song and watch the video.

There will be live streaming on the official San Marino Tv website, as well as on Eurovision.tv.

Who is Valentina Monetta?

With her first group 'Tiberio' she got her first taste of Black Music vocals (R&B, Soul, Funky, Acid Jazz), while she worked with Hip Hop with her second group 'Parafunky' and started a new partnership with Monica Giacomobono for the Sharm project, which then became Harem-B. In 2002 she released the single Sharp in collaboration with Paul Manners Production.

She continued her collaboration with vocalist Vanessa J and high calliper musicians like Marcello Sutera, Nicola Peruk and Nabuk. In the meantime, she was able to put her love of jazz and Bossa nova into practice with various local bands.

In 2006, she joined the discography project, 2black, a very successful record in 2004  with the single (a remake of In Alto Mare by Loredana Bertè) Waves of Love, releasing the main track VAI with a new single in the summer of 2006.

She has backed performers such as Silvie Vartan, Vanessa-J, DJ Master Frees, Bombo’s, El Ruben, Elena Cattaneo and Dance-House for musical productions,  and the New York artist R Fame. She has also worked with Sammarinese band Blue Mobile.                      

 In the meantime, Valentina created her bases, her melodies and her beats, submitting the song Se Non Ci Sei Tu for the competition to select the artist to represent San Marino at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2008.

Today, thanks to her experience, better self-awareness and talent, Valentina Monetta started to explore her love of jazz and Bebop rediscovering the importance of Italian music and its artists. She recorded her album Il Mio Gioco Preferito with the trio 'My Funky Valentine'.

On the 27th March she will perform Ma Che Differenza Fa at the TitanoTheatre in San Marino, a musical monolog directed by Fabrizio Raggi dedicatedto the Italian singer Ornella Vanoni.

The story of Valentina Monetta representing San Marino is a sort of fairy tale. Taking part in the Eurovision Song Contest requires organisation, partners, resources, the right song and the right interpreter. SMtv in San Marino started working on that last autumn, evaluating different proposals. And initially Valentina wasn’t one of them!

The internal selection started, the proposals left were finally two and then one, but at the very last moment the unplanned happened. They needed a good, young, Sammarinese singer and they needed her straight away.

Valentina was singing on a Saturday night, and that same night, the SMtv director was there by chance. She listened to her, and really appreciated her. She was the perfect singer for the song they had already selected. On the Monday they organised an audition.

Valentina has got a rich career, and she is used to adapting every style to suit her. Two days afterwards she recorded the song and shot the video in the production studio.

Sometimes dreams come true!

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San Marino will participate in the First Semi-Final on Tuesday 22nd of May in Baku, where they have been drawn in the second half.

San Marino first entered Europe's Favourite Tv Show in 2008, with the group Miodio with the song Complice, sung in Italian, and last year they were represented by Senit with the English language song Stand By. Neither song managed to progress to the Final, so will it be third time lucky for the country?