Last night Michael Schulte won Germany’s national selection show Unser Lied für Lissabon (Our Song for Lisbon) with the emotional and heartfelt ballad “You Let Me Walk Alone”. The song was written by Nisse Ingwersen, Nina Miller and Thomas Stengaard alongside Michael in memory of his late father.
After some disappointing results in recent years, Germany’s national selection show was completely revamped by the German broadcaster NDR for this year. Out of four thousand entries received, a panel of international experts chose the best six to perform live on the show. As well as this, a songwriting camp was set up for up to fifteen national and international producers, composers and lyricists to come together and work on songs for the contestants.
After the six contestants had performed, the decision was down to the voting public, a one hundred member Eurovision panel and an international jury made up of music experts. Michael earned the top twelve points from all three, making him the winner of the competition. He will, therefore, represent Germany at the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest in May. As Germany is part of the “big five” they will automatically qualify for the grand final.
You can watch Michael Schulte perform “You Let Me Walk Alone” below:
Germany is the only country to have officially taken part in every Eurovision Song Contest since 1956. They have managed to win the contest on two occasions, first with Nicole in 1982 and more recently in 2010 with Lena. However, in the last three years, Germany has not fared well in the competition and has finished 27th, 26th and 25th respectively.
Germany will be hoping they can improve on their recent results, 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 and Sanja Ilic and Balkanika for Serbia.
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.
Finally, don’t forget to let us know your thoughts on Germany’s selection of Michael Schulte for this year’s Eurovision. You can tweet us your thoughts on Twitter @CelebMix.
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