This weekend saw Ireland’s selected Eurovision 2016 representative, Nicky Byrne perform his official entry, Sunlight live for the first time since its release.
After weeks of speculation in the lead up to the official announcement, it was confirmed by the Irish national broadcaster, RTÉ in mid-January that Nicky Byrne had been internally selected to represent the nation at the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest with his song, Sunlight.
A month since RTÉ’s announcement and Nicky has debuted his bidding Eurovision entry live to the public for the first time this weekend on The Ray D’Arcy Show.
Speaking to the presenter about the Irish entry announcement, Nicky revealed that there had been some backlash to the selection choice, but not as much as he had expected. The former Westlife singer continued:
I might not be the answer, of course, but I think we need to do something different.
Nicky Byrne is the first artist to be internally selected since 2007, where the country has since selected both their artist representative along with their song entry via a national selection, entitled Eurosong.
Nicky went on to talk about a conversation he had with his former manager, Louis Walsh following the announcement. Speaking of the moment he sent his entry to Louis for the first time:
When I was breaking [news] a few weeks back, I sent [Louis] the link to the video and I said “Look, I know you’ve probably heard but this is happening and here’s the song. I’d love to know what you think”. And he phoned me back and he said “Okay, I’ve listened to it twice. It’s good, it’s good! […] I don’t think you’re going to win, but I think you can qualify”.
Sunlight was released on the 12 February and is now available to purchase and download.
Nicky Byrne will compete in the second semi-final of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest for Ireland on the 12 May. Ireland will compete against 18 other countries in a bid to qualify to the grand final of the competition on the 14 May.
