After a long row of national finals we have come to an end with the Belgium selection being held tonight. The Belgium TV viewers decided that Iris will be representing them at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest with the song Would You?.
The day after the Belgian’s officially spent a day in sorrow for the victims of a terrible bus accident in Switzerland it was time to decide which song their participant, Iris, would be singing at the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku.
Iris, whose real name is Laura Van den Bruel, is just 17 years old. Last year she released her first single, Wonderful, which peaked as #28 at the Flandern single top50. Iris will be the youngest Flemmish participant ever at the Eurovision Song Contest.
The songs:
1. Iris – Safety Net
The first song competing to represent Belgium at the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest is a song with quite cheesy lyrics about friendship and love and a night in armor finding her at the end. It is a ballad with a powerful chorus and Iris do perform it well. In the background you see three violin players, a chellist and a piano player.
2. Iris – Would You?
For the second song Iris went to another stage. She starts out being all in dark before pink and purple standing lights are turned on. Once again we are treated with a ballad, but this time not nearly as powerful. Instead it has some pop elements added to it when it builds up to the chorus. Another good performance, which fits her voice quite well.
The show:
Peter Van de Veire hosted the show that consisted of two programmes. The first one started at 20:00 and lasted about 15 minutes. Here the two songs were performed, but first it was time to get to know Iris a bit better. A video was shown with children pictures being shown while she told about her passion for music and performance. She also revealed that she several times sent in songs for the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, but never got selected.
After that video Iris joined the stage. She was dressed in a short sleveless white dress with a green collar and a pink belt around the waist.
When asked to choose between the two songs Iris politically correct answered that she couldn’t and needed help from the population. That was then followed up by the host announcing the voting numbers. The Belgium telefon numbers are quite long and he did also mess it up a bit. The phone numbers were not shown on screen, and afterwards it appeared like he was also informed about the messing up the phone numbers.
At 22:45 it was time to tune in for the second part of the programme. The Belgian 1980 Eurovision Song Contest entry Euro-vision by Telex played as Iris entered the studio. A short re-cap of the two songs competing was shown. In the studio was also Kris Wouters from the band Clouseau, who represented Belgium in 1991 with the song Geef Het Op. He tells about his experience from back then by mentioning that they in the band decided not to go on vacation in the countries that did not give them any points.
A clip from the Dutch and the Russian entry was shown as well with focus on that both countries had selected something special.
The result:
The Belgian song for the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest was decided only via televoting. Host Peter Van de Veire announced it as he recicved a golden envelope… and the Belgian song is – with 53% of the votes – Would You? The performance from tonight can be seen below.
