esctoday.com has received confirmation that the winner in Azerbaijan's national final this Saturday 2nd February, will not necessarily be performing the song that will go to the Eurovision Song Contest in Serbia. The winning artist can choose or write a new song between 3rd-15th February or change the song that they perform with on Saturday night.
Unformal, Aynur and Elnur will be battling to win the right to represent Azerbaijan at the Eurovision Song Contest in Saturday's national final (now taking place at 17:30 CET). Each will present two songs, but only the artist, and not the song will be decided this weekend.
In a statement to esctoday.com, a spokesman said "It is unlikely that the songs sung here will go to belgrade. We are selecting the singer, not the song on Saturday night".
Unformal's song Little Muse has been performed in public in February 2007, and as such, would not be eligable to go to Belgrade. Should they win, a new song would have to be written. Elnur will perform in Belgrade as a solo artist, so he will need to rework or replace Day after Day if he wins the competition. It is unconfirmed if Aynur will take Rhythm of fire to Serbia if she wins.
The three acts will each perform two songs, the firstsong for each artist was used in theearlier rounds of the selection process and their videos can be found in the esctoday.com video page. The second songs performed are new to the selection processbut they are unlikely to appear in Belgrade:
Unformal
- Lalala (music Farida Jafarova, lyrics Farida Jafarova, Dilara Kazimova)
- Little Muse (music Farida Jafarova, Igor Garanin, lyrics Farida Jafarova,Torgul Manafov)
Aynur
- Swear that you will stay (music Ilham Abdullayev, lyrics Zahra Badalbeyli)
- Rhythm of fire (music Mikhail Nekrasov, lyrics Zahra Badalbeyli)
Elnur
- If you’re never back (music Isa Melikov, lyrics Polina Melikova, Zahra Badalbeyli)
- Day after day (feat. Samir Javadzadeh) (music Govehr Hasanzadeh, lyrics Zahra Badalbeyli).
esctoday.com has confirmed that the rules of the selection procedure specifically state that a song can be changed or replaced between 3rd February and 15th February. A similar situation occurred in Belarus in 2005 when Angelica Agurbash won the ticket to the Eurovision Song Contest in Kiev. She replaced the song that won the national selection twice in an alloted time period, chosing eventually the song Love me tonight.
