We head to a Nordic coutry today, to the land of the thousand lakes, Nokia and Santa Claus,namely Finland in our series of the 2014 Eurovision ESCToday Interviews. We land in the beautiful Finnish capital city of Helsinki where we meet up with the 2014 Finnish Eurovision representatives SOFTENGINE, who reveal more details about their forthcoming Eurovision participation, Eurovision entry and themselves.

You guys are a relatively new band. What was your initial goal when you the band? Was it just for fun, or were you trying to get a major record deal to help you take off?

From the beginning our goal has been to become as big a band as possible.

You finished your song Something better just in time to submit to the UMK competition in Finland. Did you ever expect to reach the final, and ultimately win the competition?

We never thought we would win the competition. Honestly I didn’t believe that we would even get to the competition because there were so many songs taking part. When we got chosen to be one of the UMK competitors we were ecstatic. Getting to the finals and ultimately winning the UMK has felt unreal.                                                                                                                         

There was some stiff competition in UMK this year. What was it about the song and performance that had Finland supporting you all the way through to the final, and ultimately onto the Eurovision stage? (Softengine ended up first in both televoting and jury voting for the UMK final in Finland.)

It’s really hard to tell yourself, but a lot of people have told that the performance feels genuine and that the song is really good.

Despite writing the song in a matter of days, the lyrics of the song have some deep messages. What’s the meaning behind Something better?

Something better tells a story about an old man who reminisces about his life from childhood to the present day. He has always been dissatisfied with his life as it seems that he never achieved anything and has not done anything out of the ordinary. However, after his wife dies the man understands that all this means nothing and realizes that what he and his wife had was something better than he could have ever achieved.

Are any of you avid Eurovision fans? Do you have any memories from the contest?

We are not exactly Eurovision fans, but most of us have watched the contest every year. It is fun to watch!

What’s it like to be representing your home country of Finland on the international Eurovision Song Contest stage?

It is great for us and the promotional value for our music is huge. It is a pretty big responsibility though, we hope Finns welcome us back home after the contest!

What are your plans for Copenhagen? Anything special for staging, or will it be similar to what we’ve already seen at the UMK final?

It will be pretty similar. We try to keep the performance simple and credible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izGvzrOI4WI

Are you planning to promote your entry in Europe before the contest? Will you be touring to any countries prior to the competition?

No plans, we will just stay in Finland and play gigs here.

Have you heard any of the other competing entries in the contest this year? Which are your favourites?

I have heard some. Greece and Armenia are my favourites at the moment.

What’s next for the band after the contest in May? Any plans yet? World domination? (I’d love to see you guys touring in Canada!)

Haha, we will go to Canada as soon as possible! The most important things after the ESC are recording our debut album and playing a lot of concerts. We will put 100% of our effort to those things.

Do you have a message for your fans on esctoday.com?

We are happy if you have found something in our music that touches you. It would be great if you could follow us on Facebook and Instagram, because that is where all the latest news is. We really value every fan, THANK YOU!

ESCToday.com would like to thank Softengine, their management and YLE for this interview. We would like to wish Finland the best of luck at the forthcoming Eurovision Song Contest!