Latvia | Laura Rizzotto will sing Funny Girl in Portugal
Tonight Latvia decided and with the decision we have the first representative of the Baltics. Latvia had an amazing show and it is Laura Rizzotto to Lisbon with the song Funny Girl!
This year almost 100 entries were submitted for Supernova, from which 63 were selected to take part in the new online voting phase. In this phase, online users could listen to the entries, while the artists remained anonymous, and either “Like” or “Dislike” the individual entries. Taking these results into account, the jury then selected 30 entries, which moved on to a live audition in front of the jury. The jury consisted of Supernova producer Ilze Jansone, music producer DJ Rudd, host Toms Grēviņš and jazz singer Jolanta Gulbe. The jury then selected the artists moving forward to the actual competition. The artists and their songs were announced on December 6th 2017.
Tonight 8 songs competed in the Supernova final - the Latvian national selection for Eurovision 2018 with Laura Rizzotto and her song Funny Girl being crowned the winner.
Latvia had 3 semi-finals. 2 artists were selected from each semi-final to proceed to the final. The second semi-final brought some drama to the show. As the show ended with the victory of Madara and Ritvars, the producers announced next day that there had been a problem with the calculation of the votes. After reviewing the votes, Markus Riva ended up as one of the two winners of the night. To be fair, Ritvars held on to their ticket to the final, and is also competed in the final tonight. After all semi-finals had concluded,an additional Wild Card entry was given a spot in the final as well, Sudden Lights with their Just fine entry.
Tonight has seen eight artists compete for the honor of representing Latvia. The show order was:
1. Sudden Lights - Just Fine
2. Ritvars - Who's Counting
3. MADARA - Esamība
4. Liene Greifane - Walk the Talk
5. Lauris Valters - Lovers Bliss
6. Edgars Kreilis - Younger Days
7. Laura Rizzotto - Funny Girl
8. Markus Riva - This Time
Latvia joined the Eurovision family in 2000, the last Baltic state to join Eurovision. Latvia started of very strong. In their first year Brainstorm, with their song 'My Star', came in third, bringing home the country's first bronze medal. And already in their third year, Marie N and her song 'I wanna' brought the victory home to Latvia. Latvia have so far participated 18 times and only 8 times not been in the final. Since the introduction of the semi-finals back in 2004, the country have only 6 qualifications to the grand final. Last year Triana Park with their song, 'Line' was one of the songs which could not qualify to the final. Will this year's winner fare better?
Laura Rizzotto has won Latvian National Final and secured the right to be Latvia's next Eurovision entrant in Portugal. What do you think of Funny Girl. Please tell us in the comments below.
