Esctoday.com interviews Shiri of Israel

by Benny Royston 318 views

Israel�s Shiri Maimon became one of the 10 qualifiers to reach the final of the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest on Thursday night. Esctoday.com caught up with the Israeli singer and chatted over some rice about the food, the city of Kyiv, the Eurovision Song Contest and her career.

Before Eurovision, you were in the Israel Pop Idol competition and you came second�

The show lasted a few months, it was great, it was my breakthrough in Israel. I�m very glad I did it, and I�m very glad that I won second place because it was a great opportunity to go straight to the Eurovision Contest and win first place.

This is the first time for many years that Israel has held a national final to select their Eurovision song. Do you think that it�s better than having an internal selection?

�Yes, definitely a better way because the audience, the people that look at you on the tv, they can see who they want to send to represent them, so it�s very important.

How did you get involved with the Kdam festival this year?

The organisers of the contest approached me and asked me to take part, and I said yes, of course, why not.

Did you already have this song ready?

It was the first song that I heard, and I told everyone that this is the song that I want to take to the preselections. I don�t care, it�s the most beautiful song that I�ve heard in a couple of years. I feel so confortable with it. It�s such an emotional song and I really love it

Did you think that you were going to win Kdam?

I hoped, but there was some very famous singers, Tsvi Kapik� I thought that the competition would be very hard and it was. I hoped that I could win.

How did it feel to win, after second in pop idol.

Actually, I took the douze points so many times during the voting that actually I started to feel that its not nice, it�s not that kind. There�s so many good competitors, so why should I get all the top marks, but it was great to win of course.