Eurovision Legends3 Nov 2021

Petri Laaksonen part I

The young student Petri Laaksonen was totally inexperienced as a songwriter, but after some encouragement from his teacher he decided to try to take part in the Finnish pre-selection for the Eurovision Song Contest. Without any connections in the music business, he found lyricist Veli-Pekka Lehto in the phone book and had him write lyrics to the song he had composed, and to their surprise it was accepted. However, the pre-selected artists weren't too keen on his composition, until established artist Sonja Lumme said that she could sing it. Despite being described in media as containing too many weird Finnish vowels and maybe should have been sung in Swedish instead, the song won comfortably and our young and broke composer got to travel to Gothenburg on his own expenses, and almost had to resort to prostituting himself to finance his adventure.

As a fan of the contest, Petri still remembers and tells us everything in detail, both about the participation with "Eläköön elämä" in 1985 and about his second attempt with "Sata salamaa" in 1987, which turned out to be another victory, with an artist who had to be tricked and threatened to return to her singing career. The man who couldn't lose got to travel to Brussels, yet again on his own accord, but a forgotten tape and a stolen item of clothing made sure that neither his trip nor the song turned out exactly as planned.

Legend: Petri Laaksonen

Songs: Eläköön elämä (Sonja Lumme, Finland 1985) & Sata salamaa (Vicky Rosti, Finland 1987)

Host: Emil Löfström

Contact: emil@schlagervannerna.se

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