Just minutes ago Ukraine selected their eight entry for the Eurovision Song Contest. Vasyl Lazarovich had, internally, been chosen to represent his country this year and tonight the song was chosen in a show that featured four other participants we’ll see in Oslo.

Five songs were performed by Vasyl Lazarovich in tonight’s Ukrainian selection. One of them would be the song that Vasyl will be singing for Ukraine at the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest in May in Oslo.

The songs:

1. Adrenalin (witten by Dmitriy Klimashenko and Olga Yarynich)

Vasyl starts this song by sitting down on a big black chair which turns out to have dancers underneath as he leaves the chair. He has six dancers with him on stage. Once the black "chair" stops acting like a black ghost in the background they all appear as dancers. Near the end of the song the "chair" is once again formed and he sits down.

2. Shine of our star (written by Ziga Pirnat and Brandon Stone)

Here he starts standing alone on the stage that has a black background which is shortly after changing clours to a more red-ish one with stars shooting. Half way through the song he is joined by six dancers all in black capes. The background changes again, this time to give the illiusion of fire.

3. I know (written by Nikola Karajia and Brandon Stone)

This song starts with Vasyl being on stage together with three violin players, a chello player and a saxophone player. As a ballad it is a very simple performance where the background changes to create atmosphere. The musicians are a big part of the set and is quite often in the picture. 

4. Don’t wanna lose you (written by Claes Andreasson)

Vasyl starts with a guitar player next to him. There is fire on the background. Six dancers joins the stage later on. The backgrond flashes a lot and reminds of the image you see from Windows Media Player when playing music. The performance ends with the dancers falling to the ground, the guitar player not being in the picture and only Vasyl standing.

5. I love you (written by Brandon Stone and Olga Yarynich)

Here he starts standing next to a white piano. A lot of smoke is seen on the ground as often used for ballads like this. After a little bit he moves away from the piano and the smoke is being mixed with pink and light blue lights. The background is mainly blue. And the end the smoke is gone and the floor is white, blue and red. The song reminds of Vlad & Mirita’s song for Romania in 2008 and comes across as the strongest of the five songs.

The show:

As a help to the foreign viewers whose Ukrainian is a bit rusty the broadcaster put up an English commentary on the webstream. This is the first time such a service has been provided so let’s hope it will spread.

The show starts with an introduction of Vasyl. This is done by showing pictures and videos of him on the screen while telling his story. After that the hosts comes on stage and tell more about how the voting is going to be like. The expert jury is being introduced. 

After the first song clips from the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest appears. After the second song the story about how it all started back in 1956 is being told. After the third song some clips from Ukranian entries over the past years are being shown. After the fourth song they tell about how Vasyl has been working together with German song and songwriter Brandon Stone. You will notice that he has written three of tonight’s songs.

Several guests had found their way to Ukraine tonight making it an interesting show to watch, although some might say that the interval acts were better than the participating songs. Eva Rivas performed her Armenian entry for Oslo; Apricot stone. Miro representing Bulgaria performs his entry Angel Si Ti. Sofie sang her Georgian entry called Shine. Next is Safura from Azerbaijan singing Drip Drop. You might remember that they didn’t actually announce the winning song in their national final and we can therefore not be entirely sure that this is their song for Oslo. As some might notice then all of these four 2010 participants are placed in the second semi-final where Ukraine also is. Brandon Stone also gives a little performance of the song Here I Am.

The voting:

The winning song were selected by a combination of jury experts and televoting. The hosts are explaining the voting procedure every fifth minute making sure no one forgets it. Some of the experts says that they are quite pleased with the performances and that they feel sure they can pick a song worthy of representing Ukraine in Oslo. They do give Vasyl the advise to work on his English pronunciation though. Most of the experts says that they prefer song nr. 5. – but that they would like to change the arrangement of the 5th one before sending it to the international contest. Song nr. 3 is their second option. One of the experts do however directly say that none of the songs are good enough and that they lack the national sound that helped Ruslana to victory in 2004.

After the talk to the experts the voting started with a re-cap of all five songs. No matter which song is being chosen then it might just for the first time be a problem for Ukraine to qualify for the final as none of them has a strong international appeal and the country has been placed in the second semi-final which so far comes across as the strongest one. 

The result can be seen in the screenshot below where you also can see Vasyl’s performance of the winning song: 

Ukraine at the Eurovision Song Contest:

Ukraine had their debut at the Contest in 2003 where Olexandr Ponomariov finished 14th with the song Hasta La Vista and already with their second entry they won. That was when Ruslana performed her Wild Dances. After the semi-finals were introduced they have never failed to reach the final and in both 2007 and 2008 they came second. Last year Svetlana Loboda brought the country to a 12th position, which is actually the worst they have done since Greenjolly finished 19th in 2005.

This year Ukraine will participate in the second semi-final as one of the first eight songs in the line-up.