HalamaK
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Loreen - Tattoo
After taking a break from the spotlight - "to focus on other stuff"
- she’s been surprisingly productive musically lately. There’s been numerous songs attached to Loreen in recent times and why she chose Tattoo is still a mystery other than that she’s publicly stated felt “something” when she heard the song. All the talk says she’s entering with a strong entry. Similar to Euphoria and contrary to Statements (for which she was a part of the creation team from scratch) this was a finished song delivered to Loreen which she’s since meddled with and “made hers”. The story I chose to believe is that this entry was first submitted with Cazzi Opeia as the intended performer.
How Euphoria came to be what it is today
It's interesting how artists who would normally snark at any music show competitor still treats Loreens name with pure reverence. People can tell that she's genuine and it's not very common in todays society that an artist can compromise their career to be themselves but still end up making it.
Daniel Welsh did a great interview with Loreen last year on how Euphoria came about.
“I was a hippie, I wasn’t aware of Eurovision, I didn’t even own a television at that time."
“My life was basically about being in a spiritual place where I could meditate and work on that at that time. Media, television and everything, that was not even in my sphere, and especially not competitions.”
When Eurovision entered her world, Loreen had already had a few brushes with the music industry. After finishing in fourth place in her native Sweden’s version of Pop Idol in 2004, she competed in Melodifestivalen – the Swedish selection show, which is watched by around half of the population – for the first time in 2011, the year before her actual win
However, Loreen notes that these past experiences had left her feeling a little dissatisfied.
“A lot of things I did before Eurovision were a compromise, basically,” she explains. “People having ideas and thoughts about how I should be, and me trying to satisfy that. ‘We see you like this’, ‘we see you like that’, and I was just like, ‘OK, OK, OK’. And it was painful to do that.”
That’s why, she says, when Eurovision came along, it was imperative that she took on creative control and create the performance herself – without having to present to anyone before it was fully realised.
As she puts it: “Nobody knew anything. They didn’t know what I’d created. And they were scared as fuck."
“It was scary as fuck,” the singer recalls. “You feel so alone in that moment when you believe in something that nobody else believes in.”
Loreen remembers “a lot of pushback” from “all the people that had some financial interest in me”, who came with their own suggestions of how to improve a performance she had put her heart and soul into – which would ultimately have taken away so many of the aspects of what made Euphoria so iconic.
“It was never aggressive, but it was still there,” she says. “Their ideas were like, ‘could you just please wear shoes? Do you really have to be barefoot? Maybe a pair of high heels? Something like that?’. “Or, ‘could you just try to turn up the lights so we can see your face? Or change the look?’ – because my fringe was down over my eyes, I don’t understand how I could find my way around the stage. Can we just give you more makeup, maybe some red lipstick?’.”
Not everyone follows in Loreen's fotseps.
Things apparently came to a head the day before Loreen’s first performance of Euphoria, when she was told outright that one of its most distinctive details was going to have to go.
“The producer said to me, ‘we can’t have the siren at the beginning’,” she says. “And I told him, ‘we need the siren at the beginning to neutralise the space’. He said, ‘if you have the siren, you’re going to kill the song’. Basically I was told, ‘you’re jeopardising the whole thing’.
“This was very late, I was exhausted, it was just before midnight, and he said, ‘it’s never going to work, Loreen’. And so I said, ‘it’s either the siren or I’m out’.”
Loreen got her siren, but admits: “I remember thinking, ‘what have I done? What if it doesn’t work?’. You know, all these thoughts you get when you’re really hard on your own intuition.”
As for the producer in question, he felt rather differently once he saw the finished product.
“To his credit, when he saw the performance he came up to me with tears in his eyes – I know this sounds funky but it really was what happened,” Loreen reveals. “He was like, ‘I don’t know what to say, I’m so sorry, this is so beautiful and it doesn’t even matter if it wins or not’.”
“I really didn’t expect to win,” she insists. “That was not even important to me at the time. But I can’t even describe the spiritual feeling when I did. I was standing there, and there was this connection between myself and the crowd, we were all together, we were all one. I know how that sounds – but it was a massive feeling. It was not about ‘look at me and what I’ve created’’, it was just a mutual understanding. And it was fucking beautiful.”
She continues: “I was standing there with 50,000 people on the other side and they were so happy… because what I presented was spirituality in a forum where everything is just ‘glitter!’. And as a woman, there’s ‘high heels!’ and there’s ‘sexy!’ – and I love that, and I can be that too if I want to – but it was almost as if people had longed for things to be simple and clean and raw.”
Melodifestivalen/ESC Performances
Since I’m bored and as we’ve already her Melfest performances too many times I’ll link some alternative performances of the legendary MHIRM and Euphoria.
My Heart Is Refusing Me
Euphoria
Statements
Interval act - Paper Lights
Resent Releases
After taking a break from the spotlight - "to focus on other stuff"
- she’s been surprisingly productive musically lately. There’s been numerous songs attached to Loreen in recent times and why she chose Tattoo is still a mystery other than that she’s publicly stated felt “something” when she heard the song. All the talk says she’s entering with a strong entry. Similar to Euphoria and contrary to Statements (for which she was a part of the creation team from scratch) this was a finished song delivered to Loreen which she’s since meddled with and “made hers”. The story I chose to believe is that this entry was first submitted with Cazzi Opeia as the intended performer.How Euphoria came to be what it is today
It's interesting how artists who would normally snark at any music show competitor still treats Loreens name with pure reverence. People can tell that she's genuine and it's not very common in todays society that an artist can compromise their career to be themselves but still end up making it.
Daniel Welsh did a great interview with Loreen last year on how Euphoria came about.
“I was a hippie, I wasn’t aware of Eurovision, I didn’t even own a television at that time."
“My life was basically about being in a spiritual place where I could meditate and work on that at that time. Media, television and everything, that was not even in my sphere, and especially not competitions.”
When Eurovision entered her world, Loreen had already had a few brushes with the music industry. After finishing in fourth place in her native Sweden’s version of Pop Idol in 2004, she competed in Melodifestivalen – the Swedish selection show, which is watched by around half of the population – for the first time in 2011, the year before her actual win
However, Loreen notes that these past experiences had left her feeling a little dissatisfied.
“A lot of things I did before Eurovision were a compromise, basically,” she explains. “People having ideas and thoughts about how I should be, and me trying to satisfy that. ‘We see you like this’, ‘we see you like that’, and I was just like, ‘OK, OK, OK’. And it was painful to do that.”
That’s why, she says, when Eurovision came along, it was imperative that she took on creative control and create the performance herself – without having to present to anyone before it was fully realised.
As she puts it: “Nobody knew anything. They didn’t know what I’d created. And they were scared as fuck."
“It was scary as fuck,” the singer recalls. “You feel so alone in that moment when you believe in something that nobody else believes in.”
Loreen remembers “a lot of pushback” from “all the people that had some financial interest in me”, who came with their own suggestions of how to improve a performance she had put her heart and soul into – which would ultimately have taken away so many of the aspects of what made Euphoria so iconic.
“It was never aggressive, but it was still there,” she says. “Their ideas were like, ‘could you just please wear shoes? Do you really have to be barefoot? Maybe a pair of high heels? Something like that?’. “Or, ‘could you just try to turn up the lights so we can see your face? Or change the look?’ – because my fringe was down over my eyes, I don’t understand how I could find my way around the stage. Can we just give you more makeup, maybe some red lipstick?’.”
Not everyone follows in Loreen's fotseps.
Things apparently came to a head the day before Loreen’s first performance of Euphoria, when she was told outright that one of its most distinctive details was going to have to go.
“The producer said to me, ‘we can’t have the siren at the beginning’,” she says. “And I told him, ‘we need the siren at the beginning to neutralise the space’. He said, ‘if you have the siren, you’re going to kill the song’. Basically I was told, ‘you’re jeopardising the whole thing’.
“This was very late, I was exhausted, it was just before midnight, and he said, ‘it’s never going to work, Loreen’. And so I said, ‘it’s either the siren or I’m out’.”
Loreen got her siren, but admits: “I remember thinking, ‘what have I done? What if it doesn’t work?’. You know, all these thoughts you get when you’re really hard on your own intuition.”
As for the producer in question, he felt rather differently once he saw the finished product.
“To his credit, when he saw the performance he came up to me with tears in his eyes – I know this sounds funky but it really was what happened,” Loreen reveals. “He was like, ‘I don’t know what to say, I’m so sorry, this is so beautiful and it doesn’t even matter if it wins or not’.”
“I really didn’t expect to win,” she insists. “That was not even important to me at the time. But I can’t even describe the spiritual feeling when I did. I was standing there, and there was this connection between myself and the crowd, we were all together, we were all one. I know how that sounds – but it was a massive feeling. It was not about ‘look at me and what I’ve created’’, it was just a mutual understanding. And it was fucking beautiful.”
She continues: “I was standing there with 50,000 people on the other side and they were so happy… because what I presented was spirituality in a forum where everything is just ‘glitter!’. And as a woman, there’s ‘high heels!’ and there’s ‘sexy!’ – and I love that, and I can be that too if I want to – but it was almost as if people had longed for things to be simple and clean and raw.”
Melodifestivalen/ESC Performances
Since I’m bored and as we’ve already her Melfest performances too many times I’ll link some alternative performances of the legendary MHIRM and Euphoria.
My Heart Is Refusing Me
Euphoria
Statements
Interval act - Paper Lights
Resent Releases
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). She did however get a bit burned after her last two attempts failed to meet her own expectations. Multiple sources says Mariette as late as last year claimed she would not enter Melodifestivalen again unless she had a winning song. As such, expect this to be her last attempt at Eurovision glory for a good while.
