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

Instagram Facebook

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(151)

Gracia

In 2005, 22 year old Gracia's song climbed onto the German singles chart, earning her a wildcard into the national final. She went on to win it. Behind her stood an established songwriter with a strin...

30 Aug 32min

Johnny Logan

He's the only artist in Eurovision history to win the contest three times — as a performer in 1980 and 1987, and as a songwriter in 1992. In this episode, Marcus sits down with the legendary Johnny Lo...

29 Aug 41min

Loreen

Having started her career in the Swedish version of pop idol 2004, it took Loreen 7 years before the big breakthrough came. What happened in between and what does she have in common with Leila K. Wha...

2 Feb 202344min

Jamala

In 2016, a Ukrainian trained opera singer sang a song about the deportation of Crimeans in 1944, which could easily also be interpreted as a thinly veiled comment on the recent Russian annexation of C...

8 Jun 202229min

Hans Van Hemert

Many countries in Eurovision seem to have their own "super-composer", and in the case of the Netherlands this person is Hans van Hemert. He wrote the Dutch entries of 1972, 1974 and 1976, and he has m...

20 Apr 20221h 3min

Udo Jürgens

Udo Jürgens was already a big star when he first competed in Eurovision for his Austria in 1964. He didn't win, but got the biggest hit after the contest, both with his own version and with covers in ...

13 Apr 20221h 6min

Eva Santamaria

An argument in Los Angeles led to the creation of the perhaps most modern song to have taken part in Eurovision until that time, but the road that led Eva Santamaria there was quite a surprise. Hear w...

6 Apr 202250min

Merethe Trøan

The "plump chicken from Trondheim" tried to reach Eurovision already at 14 years old, but had to wait another seven years until she finally succeeded with the unusually structured banger "Visjoner". W...

9 Feb 20221h 16min