TIRANA, Dec. 28 – Eugent Bushpepa won the 56th edition of Albania’s Song Festival this week, the Albanian national selection for the Eurovision Contest. Albania will compete this year with the song Mall (Yearning), in Lisbon, Portugal.
The Song Festival took place over the course of three nights this week in Tirana. Two semi-finals were held before the final night, during which the winner of the contest and Albania’s future representative for the Euro Song were selected.
This is the 15th time the competition has been used to determine the Albanian Eurovision entry.
Bushpepa was chosen by a professional jury. Albania’s first appearance in the Eurovision was in 2004. Last year, American-Albanian singer Lindita represented the country with the song World.
Albania won its best place in the contest in 2012, with Rona Nishliu’s song Suus. Then, the country came in fifth.
Bushpepa was born in July 1984, and is a popular singer and song-writer in the country, more publicly known as Gen Bushpepa. His singing career started at an early age and it was professionally kick-started after returning to Albania from Italy, where he lived for a few years after school. His first real song as a singer started in 2006 on a Top-Channel talk show.
This was Bushpepa’s second appearance in Albania’s Song Contest. He first was in 2017 with the song Engjell (Angel).
The Song Festival has been running in Albania annually since 1962. In 2003, they adapted the format where the winner of the festival would represent Albania in the Eurovision Song Contest the following May.
As always, all competition entries are performed in Albanian for the Song Festival. The winner has the option to work on the country’s entry for the Eurovision stage. The changes could also include the language – Albania last competed with a winning track in the native language in 2013.
The country’s debut at the Eurovision song contest was back in 2004, the same year the contest televised the semi-finals of the contest. On its first year, Albania came in fourth in the semi-finals and seventh in the contest’s gran finale with Anjeza Shahini’s The Image of You.
This year, Albania is one of the 39 countries that have already confirmed their participation at the Eurovision Song Contest of 2018.
The contest itself began as a “brainchild of Marcel Bezencon of the EBU. The contest was based on Italy’s Sanremo Music Festival and was designed to test the limits of live television broadcast technology,” according to the contest’s official website.
Only seven nations participated in the first contest, which was held on 24 May 1956.
“With a live orchestra, the norm in the early years, and simple sing-along songs on every radio station, the Contest grew into a true pan-European tradition” , the website adds.
Eurovision’s 60th anniversary was in 2015. An anniversary show in London was hosted by the BBC, where a dozen of former participants appeared. And to honor Australia’s 30-year-long commitment to the contest, the organizers invited the country to participate for the first time.
