On 29 January 2018, the Czech Republic’s national selection show, titled Eurovision Song CZ, took place, crowning its winner and representative, Mikolas Josef. He’ll be off to Lisbon, Portugal in May to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest 2018 with his song “Lie To Me”.
Mikolas Josef competed against five other competitors to win the show. Debbi came second with her song “High On Love”, and Eva Buresova came third with “Fly”. The winner came out on top in both the jury vote and the televote. The former consisted of ten previous Eurovision entrants, these were Dami Im (Australia 2016), Robin Bengtsson (Sweden 2017), Naviband (Belarus 2017), SunStroke Project (Moldova 2017), Sanja Vucic (Serbia 2016), Jalisse (Italy 1997), Iveta Mukuchyan (Armenia 2016), Nathan Trent (Austria 2017), Norma John (Finland 2017), and Liora Simon (Israel 1995).
Scoring 68 points through the jury vote, the other contestants had to rely on the public vote if they wanted to win the show; however, it turns out that the public were in agreement with the jury on this one. Mikolas Josef was the clear winner.
Watch Mikolas Josef’s Music Video To “Lie To Me”, The Czech Republic’s Eurovision Song For 2018, Here:
Surprisingly, Mikolas Josef almost represented the Czech Republic in 2017, but he would’ve had to have sing “My Turn”, which was not to his liking, hence why he turned it down. He didn’t connect with the song. However, this year, he wrote his own song and subsequently won Eurovision Song CZ with “Lie To Me”.
He has previously released three singles, titled “Hands Bloody”, “Free”, and “Believe (Hey, Hey)”. He graduated from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and went on to model for fashion brands for a year, including Diesel and Prada.
This is the seventh time the Czech Republic has entered the Eurovision Song Contest. They debuted in 2007 and did not compete between 2010 and 2014. Every year they have failed to qualify for the Grand Final, apart from in 2016 where Gabriela Guncikova came 25th in the Grand Final with “I Stand”. Can Mikolas Josef do his country proud by also managing to qualify for the Grand Final, and maybe even win the show?
To do so, he’ll have quite the competition. Many national selection shows are currently taking place to determine each countries’ representatives. So far, the following have been announced 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, and Alfred & Amaia for Spain.
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.