Two Danes, Brian Reinholdt and Ulf Andreasen, have set a personal record within national selections. They have entered a total of two songs – for two countries.
Their song 'I want to hold you', composed three years ago, is among the competing songs in the Lithuanian pre-selection, which is to be held on February 14.
At the same time, another song of theirs, 'Helt derinde' (=Way in there), is one of the ten participants in the Danish preselection, scheduled for February 9.
Danes competing for other countries is nothing new; Otto Brandenburg and Gitte Hænning have done that too, for Sweden and former West Germany respectively.
But this is the first time that it happens with a Danish song, as well as it is the first time that the same producer aims to compete for two different countries in one and the same contest – in this case Erik Høyrup from Odense.
Brian tells us how his and Ulf's song ended up as far away as in Lithuania.
“In 1993, I wrote a song entitled 'I love the melody', but no record company wanted to release it. My partner back then managed to get it released with King Lion, but “forgot” to credit me as the composer on the record covers.
I filed a law suit against him, and I won it too, but it took a long time.”
Thus, Brian got to know Negro artist King Lion, who lives in Denmark. At a song festival in Lithuania, King Lion met female Lithuanian singer Jolanta, and inspired by the fruitful co-operation between Tanel Padar and Dave Benton, the Estonian winners of 2001, they decided to work together.
King Lion thought of Brian's song 'I want to hold you', which had meanwhile been produced and “pepped up” by Erik Høyrup.
“Ulf and I already offered Erik a part of the royalties and copyrights, and he accepted”, Brian says. Now we can just hope for the song to win in Lithuania, taking King Lion and Jolanta to the ESC in Estonia.
“It would be really fun to go there”, Brian continues, who has just quit his work at the IT company ScanNet in order to make a living as a musician performing at private parties.
