Farid Mammadov will represent Azerbaijan at the forthcoming Eurovision Song Contest. He won the 2013 Azerbaijani Eurovision national final last night and will have the honour of flying the Azerbaijani flag in Malmo.

The talented singer Farid Mammadov will represent Azerbaijan at the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö with the song Hold Me. After one of the most competitive national finals of this season, Farid has been chosen from ten finalists to became the first ever solo male singer to compete for Azerbaijan on the Eurovision stage.

 There is no doubt that Farid has charmed the Azerbaijani audience over the last few weeks with both his considerable musical talent and smouldering good looks. As Farid, age 21 has effortlessly proven he is one of the finest vocalist Azerbaijan has produced in years. To win the completion, Farid provided an emotive and sensitive performance of the song Hold Me.  This is a strong romantic ballad, which is interpreted powerfully, yet is sensitively by Farid. Hold Me is composed by Dimitrios Kontopoulos, who previously produced Eurovision songs for Ani Lorak, Sakis Rouvas and had 27 number one hits in Greek national airplay charts.

Farid was delighted to win Azerbaijan national final. Although it was his dream to sing for Azerbaijan, he previously had never participated in national selections as he felt like the time was not right for him. Over the last few years he has developed his singing ability to the point were he was ready to succeed. This proved to the right decision for Farid as not only did he win the jury vote in the final, he also gained the highest number of televotes from the public during the qualifying rounds.

This competitive spirit is also shown in Farid’s strong passion for sport. He enjoys participating in freestyle wrestling which is regarded as the national sport of Azerbaijan. There is no doubt that he inherited this sporting abilities from his mother who was a silver medallist for the USSR in gymnastics and his father who used to be a successful judoist. Not to mention both parents are also into music, Farid’s mum plays piano and his father used to sing and play keyboards in a rock band.

Farid’s professional music career began at the age of eight when he was asked by his vocal coach to sing I Just Called to Say I Love You by Steve Wonder at his very first concert. His performance was a huge hit and since then Steve Wonder has been a major influence on his musical development. Farid started writing his own song at sixteen. During the semi-final of the national selection he performed his own song Gel Yanima (Come To Me). Not only is Farid a talented pop artist but also an accomplished Mugham singer which is a form of traditional Azerbaijani folk music and vocal art.

As many other finalists of the Azerbaijani national selection Farid took part in the casting process for the music talent show Big Stage. The show is a unique international project which differs from numerous other talent shows by a concept of creating for young artists a very special artistic environment, where polishing ones talent is much more important that just winning the show. This is where, at the creative campus of the show, Farid came to the attention of Dimitrios Kontopoulos the composer of Hold Me who was also involved in the production of the show together with an international team of professionals from Azerbaijan, USA, the UK, Greece, Sweden and Ukraine.  Dimitrios was seeking a strong performer for his song and Hold Me was performed by Farid for the first time at the Big Stage final on March 9^th.

Farid Mammadov– Hold me

Azerbaijan debuted at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2008 and won the event on its 4th attempt in 2011 with Ell and Nikki’sRunning scared, thus bringing the contest to Baku in 2012.

Stay tuned to Esctoday.com for the latest news on Azerbaijan and its 2013 Eurovision Song Contest participation.