After a quite good placing with the Estonian girl group Vanilla Ninja, the Swiss broadcaster will continue their promising way of choosing the Eurovision Song Contest entrant from among well-known artists. So far, five music acts have shown a serious interest in taking part for Switzerland.
The Swiss entry will once again be chosen internally. The artists must have had at least one top fifty CD and they must be able to demonstrate TV experience. Switzerland also focuses on actual stars, as the singer or group must have had produced a professional video in the last twelve months. The performers needn't necessarily have Swiss nationality. The deadline is on October 14th.
One of the five music acts is Mia Aegerter, who took part in the 2005 German national final with her own composition Alive. She is actually Swiss, although she became famous as an actress in a German daily soap. She has had two top ten entries in the Swiss charts, sung in the Swiss dialect and two other top fifty singles in English, one of which was Alive.
Andreas Lundstedt of the Swedish group Alcazar is also one of the possible participants. Alcazar has taken part twice in the Swedish Melodifestivalen, in 2003 and 2005. As a solo perfomer, Andreas Lundstedt hasn't managed to enter the Swiss charts yet, although Alcazar had two songs reaching the top fifty, namely Crying in the discotheque in 2001 and This is the world we live in in 2004.
The group Schandmaul ('disgrace mouth') plays folk rock in German. They had several minor hits in the German speaking parts of Europe.
Pop group Lunik had two top fifty songs in 2001 and 2003. Their other songs didn't manage to enter the charts. Their album Ahead reached 16th place in charts, the second one Weather reached 6th position. Their latest album Life is on our side managed a 9th position in 2004.
Subway to Sally, a rock band singing in German, had some hits in the last few years. Their latest album Nord Nord Ost, which was launched in August, has been quite successful.
