German broadcaster, NDR, has revealed the names of the 2018 German Eurovision national final candidates. Germany is gearing up in full steam for the forthcoming Eurovision Song Contest  and is all set to bring the best song and entry to Lisbon!

These six participants stand a chance of representing Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest in Lisbon: Xavier Darcy, Ivy Quainoo, Ryk, Michael Schulte, Natia Todua, and the voXXclub band are the participants in the Unser Lied für Lissabon (Our Song for Lisbon) programme.

Three broadcasters will air the German pre-selection for Eurovision on Thursday, 22 February 2018, at 20:15 CET: Das Erste, ONE and Deutsche Welle.

The 100 members of the Eurovision Panel and the 20-member international jury of experts voted for the six participants. The whole selection process began with 4,000 possible participants.

Thomas Schreiber, Head of Entertainment at ARD:

Congratulations and thanks to our six acts! In a multi-stage process, they were selected by the members of our international jury and the 100 women and men who represent the international ESC viewers. They found six participants that promise to deliver a very exciting, diverse ESC semi-final. The goal is to find the best song for Lisbon now.

The next step

A three-day Song Writing Camp will be held in Berlin during which up to 15 national and international lyricists, composers and producers will develop songs together with the six acts.

On the basis of this material, a decision will then be made as to which song is right for whom and how the performance shall be staged.

The 6 candidates

Xavier Darcy

Xavier Darcy is a 22 year old singer/songwriter, who hails from Munich with British and French roots.

This year, he released his debut album Darcy, which was in the Top 50 of the iTunes charts. Before this, he had already launched two EPs.

He has performed at numerous festivals, was a guest in Inas Nacht on the First German Television channel, among other things, and was the support act on tours of Rea Garvey and Joris.

Ryk

Ryk (Rick Jurthe, 28) studied popular music at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media.

Since completing his studies, he has been working as a composer, singer and producer for projects reaching from film to variety shows.

In recent years, he released several EPs, until 2015 under his old stage name, FOXOS.

Since 2016, Ryk has been the musical director and composer for the most successful Europe-wide acrobatic show: Fireworks of Gymnastics. He has won several renowned newcomer prizes and has played at numerous international and national festivals.

Ivy Quainoo

For her debut album, Ivy Quainoo (25) from Berlin received a Gold Award right off the bat.

In 2013 she received the German Music Industry Award ECHO as Best Artist Rock/Pop national.

She toured Germany with her band for the third time in November 2017.

Since 2012, Ivy has been the most successful winner of the first German season of The Voice of Germany up to now.

She has been living in New York for the most part for the past two years and is studying at the renowned acting school The American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Michael Schulte

Michael Schulte (27) appears in front of a huge audience – online: His YouTube channel has had more than 50 million views and has nearly 200,000 subscribers.

A large portion of his more than 1.2 Spotify stream-accessings each month comes from Sweden, Norway, England and the USA.

By now the singer/songwriter has successfully released seven albums and EPs. He grew up on the German-Danish border in Dollerup and now lives in Buxtehude near Hamburg.

Natia Todua

Natia Todua (21) came to Germany from Georgia to fulfill her dream of living her life as a musician and as a singer. She worked as an au-pair and lives now in Bruchsal.

Two weeks ago, she won the 7th season of The Voice of Germany by a landslide. Natia Todua currently tours Germany.

voXXclub

The style of the Munich band voXXclub is referred to as new Volksmusik.

voXXclub consists of five singers from three countries. Its members, Florian Claus, Stefan Raaflaub, Korbinian Arendt, Christian Schild and Michael Hartinger mix traditional with modern music and back it up with groovy beats and sounds. Their videos have been clicked on millions of times on the Internet.

Their debut Alpin went Platinum and they have already been nominated for the German Music Industry Award ECHO three times. Their third album came out in 2016.

Our Song for Lisbon

The producer of Our Song for Lisbon is none other than Matthias Alberti of Kimmig Entertainment: the show will be developed jointly by Florian Wieder and Jens Bujar (Lodge of Levity), the voting experts of Digame Mobile and Norddeutscher Rundfunk (member station of ARD network).

The show will be directed by Volker Weicker, whilst Thomas Schreiber and Christoph Pellander will be the commissioning editors. Advance tickets sales for the show are expected to begin in mid-January.

About the participant selection process

To begin with, in recent months, based on online questionnaires and through an intensive process, 100 members for the Eurovision Panel were selected. They represent as closely as possible the taste of the international Eurovision viewers.

Parallel to this, music experts selected 211 candidates for the first selection from among 4,000 possible participants. The Eurovision Panel decided from these 211 the 17 they believe are the best.

On the basis of short videos, these 17 were evaluated by both the international jury of experts and the Eurovision panel, in order to find the best six for the German pre-selection.

Germany in Eurovision

Germany is one of the founder members of the Eurovision Song Contest having debuted in the very first contest in 1956. The country has won the competition twice in 1982 with Nicole and in 2010 with Lena.

Germany has participated in every single contest since 1956 with the exception of 1996 when the country didn’t qualify through from the internal audio semifinal round.

In 2017, the Germans opted for a national final and sent Levina to Kyiv with  Perfect life.