Zeit (Time), that was the title of Bianca Shomburg's song, with which she represented Germany in the Eurovision Song Contest of 1997. One can conclude that time has not been too kind with Bianca since then: first, due to her disappointing result (18th), she lost her record deal, later on the composer of the song, Ralph Siegel, revealed that he initially wrote the song for Esther Ofarim, not for her. Now, six years later, Bianca applied for the second edition of the casting show Deutschland sucht den Superstar (Pop Idols) – and failed.
As the German newspaper Neue Westfälische reported today, the singer did not survive the preselections. 160.000 hopefuls applied for the show, of which 19.500 were selected for a first casting and 250 out of them, including Miss Shomburg, for a second time. “Bianca took a flight from Mallorca to Cologne for that”, her fiancée and manager, Klaus Scharffenorth, told the paper. Although it was said that she “sung fine”, she did not made it into the last 100.
“Maybe I did not fit into the concept”, Bianca concluded after getting over her first shock. As Pop Idols is a show with young, yet unknown participants, targeting a more adolescent audience, she may be right with that estimation.
Bianca was not the first Eurovision artist who failed to make it into a casting show: as our Slovenian editor David Senjor recalls, Karmen Stavec (who was born and raised in Berlin), was also rejected from the first season of Deutschland sucht den Superstar, as the singer once confessed in a TV interview.
Bianca Shomburg and her fiancée will now concentrate on their music school in Gütersloh, where they want to help young talents making their breakthrough in the music business. Good luck with that…
