Tonight, the 2008 national final season of the Eurovision Song Contest will continue: the seventh semi final of the Icelandic national selection will be held. In the run-up to this semi final, there have been many speculations and appears to become the most accalimed heat so far. Three songs will be presented and the best one – chosen by televoting – will reach the final to be held on 16th February. Of course, there will be a webcast again!
The show
The show will start at 21:15 CET (20:15 local time). The results will be revealed in the second part of the show at 22:40 CET. Ragnhildur Steinunn Jónsdóttir & Gísli Einarsson will host the program.
Although the winners will be chosen by televoting, there is also a jury that comments on the songs. One of the jury members is Selma who represented Iceland twice in the Eurovision Song Contest: in 1999, she achieved second place (Iceland's best result so far) with All out of luck; in 2005 she didn't manage to qualify through the semi final with If I had your love.
You can read more about the selection procedure here.
Webcast
You can follow the high qualitywebcast here.
The songs
It will be the turn of the last three composers whose submitted songs have been chosen for the semi finals:
- Hara (performers, composer: Hallgrímur Óskarsson) – I wanna manicure
- Eurobandið (performers, composer: Örlygur Smári) – Fullkomið líf
- Menn ársins (performers, composer: Þórarinn Freysson) – If you were here
Hallgrímur Óskarsson has among others co-written the song Open your heart with Birgitta Haukdal who represented Iceland in the 2003 Eurovision Song Contest and finished 8th, Iceland's 4th best result so far. Eurobandiðis a real Euroband andcontains many former Icelandic representatives and national final contestants (read more here).
You can find the entire list of the Icelandic preselection composers here.
In 2005, 2006 and 2007, Iceland did not manage to reach the final of the Eurovision Song Contest although the country was sometimes quite close finishing 16th, 13th and again 13th in the semi final respectively. Iceland will havetake part in one of the semi finalsin Belgrade.
