Arriving dead last in the national preselection in his country, this Eurovision 2024 candidate is nevertheless present during the grand final this week...
The choice was not left to the public this year. While Madame Monsieur, Bilal Hassani, Barbara Pravi and Alvan
But other Eurovision candidates don't have the luck of the French star. Many countries have in fact organized, last year or at the very beginning of this year, competitions to bring out talents and allow the public to choose their representatives for the big show. A way of doing things often considered more effective, since it is the European public who will also have the last word this weekend. There are even countries, like Finland, which have almost copied the Eurovision voting system to increase their chances of victory.
This year, for its 2024 New Music Competition (Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu 2024 or UMK 2024 in Finnish), Finland organized a big show at the Nokia Arena in Tampere on February 10. The show was watched by more than 1.2 million viewers on average. A success considering the country's approximately 5.5 million inhabitants. And as we don't joke with Eurovision in Finland, this competition called upon jurors from several countries such as Spain, Great Britain, Luxembourg, Sweden, Slovenia, Ukraine and Armenia . Their votes counted for 25% of the final score for each artist, before a public vote which counted for 75% of the verdict. Enough to give some quite spectacular turnarounds.
Of the six finalists of this early Eurovision 2024 (Cyan Kicks, Sexmane, Sara Siipola, Jesse Markin, Windows95man and Sini Sabotage ja Mikael Gabriel x nublu), the winner was first designated as dead last by the international jury before a completely unpredictable comeback. Windows95man, the strange nickname of the Finnish DJ Teemu Keisteri, was in fact judged the worst (or the least good, it depends) by the jury with his song “No Rules!” which collected only 28 points among professionals (12 votes from the English jurors, 6 from Spain and Ukraine, 4 from Luxembourg and zero points in the other countries). In comparison, DJ Sini Sabotage had gleaned no less than 10 more points, or 38 points in total, arriving at the top of the provisional ranking.
But that was without counting the public vote, which gave more than 72,500 votes, or 32.30% of the votes and 285 points to Windows95Man. The popular vote accounting for three quarters of the points, the latter therefore came first in the general ranking with 313 points, ahead of singer Sara Siipola at 273 points, Sini Sabotage finishing at only an unfortunate 65 points...
You will therefore be happy to learn that it is thanks to the tens of thousands of Finnish fans that you will see this strange musical UFO on the Eurovision stage on Saturday, wearing a t-shirt and cap with the logo of the famous computer system, embellished with a simple pair of briefs.
