EDGUY frontman Tobias Sammet’s AVANTASIA project lost its bid to represent Germany at the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm this May. AVANTASIA placed third out of the ten featured acts on “Unser Lied Für Stockholm”, with 17-year-old singer Jamie-Lee Kriewitz winning the competition with the song “Ghost”, which has already reached No. 1in the German iTunes Download charts and No. 11 in the German music charts.
Kriewitz, AVANTASIA and second-placed Alex Diehl had first topped the ranking in the first round of voting among the ten candidate acts.
AVANTASIA competed with its current single, “Mystery Of A Blood Red Rose”.
Sammet explained his reasons for getting involved in the Eurovision Song Contest: “It seemed like a quite unusual idea to compete with anyone in art, to play music against someone. It’s still weird anyhow, to play music against each other like in the Olympic Games. Anyway, who am I to get in the way of a great promotional opportunity?! Three minutes to show millions that we exist?”
“Unser Lied für Stockholm” was broadcast live on February 25, both online and on public TV channel Das Erste. The TV public solely decided on the winner by means of televoting, SMS voting and the Eurovision app, and the voting was organized in two rounds.
Around 150 suggestions were submitted to broadcaster NDR from radio broadcasters, producers, record labels and artists. The final 10 were chosen by NDR, two youth radio shows, music labels, and the TV production company Brainpool.
“Mystery Of A Blood Red Rose” is taken from AVANTASIA’s seventh studio album, “Ghostlights”, which was released on January 29 via Nuclear Blast. The twelve-song CD was produced by Tobias and Sascha Paeth at Gatestudio in Wolfsburg, Germany. Paeth engineered and mixed “Ghostlights”, while the mastering was done by Michael Rodenberg.
Source: Blabbermouth
