According to the jury head of the Dutch Nationaal Songfestival 2003, Willem van Beusekom, eight of the 32 songs for the preselection are in Dutch. One song is written partly in Italian and the rest is in English.
“The quality of the submitted songs was high and we succeeded to select the 32 best songs”, Van Beusekom said. The selection of the songs took place in rounds. In the first round, the jury didn't knew the names of the performers. In the second round there were 125 songs left. These songs were listened again, out of the best 60 some were invited to perform live for the jury. Willem van Beusekom said that “the performers are particulairy new, although there are some well known performers”.
The names of the 32 participants and the songs will be officially announced during a press conference at January 16.
