Moldova becomes the latest country to select their representative for the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest. Trio DoReDos were the favourites from the start and tonight won the country’s national selection show O Melodie Pentru Europe with the catchy, up-tempo song “My Lucky Day”. The winner was decided by a fifty-fifty combination of jury and public votes, with DoReDos coming out on top in both. They will be heading off to Lisbon in May to perform in the second semi-final with hopes of qualifying for the grand final.
O Melodie Pentru Europe received twenty-eight entries from hopefuls hoping to represent their country at this years Eurovision. The Moldovan broadcaster TRM then narrowed these down to the best sixteen, who all got to perform in the live final of the contest tonight.
You can watch DoReDos perform “My Lucky Day” below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJqe3M24PcY
Moldova is fairly new to the Eurovision Song Contest, only debuting in the contest in 2005. After some mixed results over the years, the country finally achieved its best result (a top three finish) in 2017. Sunstroke Project’s energetic performance of their catchy, upbeat hit “Hey, Mamma!” saw them score well, especially with viewers. This followed three years of not qualifying for the grand final.
Moldova will be hoping to either match their result from 2017 or do better and finish in the top two this year, however, they already have some tough competition. Other acts that have been announced so far are Sennek for Belgium, Saara Aalto for Finland, Waylon for the Netherlands, AISEL for Azerbaijan, Cesar Sampson for Austria, Jessica Mauboy for Australia, Eugent Bushpepa for Albania, Iriao for Georgia, Madame Monsieur for France, Julia Samoylova for Russia, Alfred & Amaia for Spain, Mikolas Josef for the Czech Republic, Ryan O’Shaughnessy for Ireland, Eleni Foureira for Cyprus, Christabelle for Malta, Zibbz for Switzerland, SuRie for the United Kingdom, Rasmussen for Denmark, Ermal Meta and Fabrizio Moro for Italy, Eye Cue for F.Y.R Macedonia, Franka for Croatia, Netta Barzilai for Israel, Gianna Terzi for Greece, Vanja Radovanovic for Montenegro, Sanja Ilic and Balkanika for Serbia and Michael Schulte for Germany.
The Eurovision Song Contest 2018 will be hosted at the Altice Arena, Lisbon, Portugal; with the two Semi-Finals taking place on 8 May and 10 May and the Grand Final taking place on 12 May. A total of 43 countries will compete in the contest.