S!sters win 'Unser Lied für Israel' and go to Tel Aviv for Germany
Posted 22 Febuary 2019 at 21:40
Germany's
national selection 'Unser Lied für Israel' took place in Berlin
tonight. The German audiences and juries decided that they would like to
be represented in Tel Aviv by Carlotta Truman and Laurita Spinelli, who
form the duo S!sters.
S!sters will sing for Germany in the Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final on the 18th of May. They won a very close national final winning the international jury vote by a single point over Makeda. Ally Ryan won the Eurovision Jury vote, leaving S!sters two points behind Makeda with the televote result to come, but they topped the public vote to claim Germany's ticket to the Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv.
We interviewed Carlotta and Laurita, right after the end credits of Unser Lied für Israel:
This is their winning performance:
About S!sters
Carlotta Truman from Hannover already won the German Rock & Pop award in five categories by the age of twelve, among others, as the best solo singer. In 2014 she performed together with Revolverheld at the NDR 2 Papenburg festival in front of 25,000 spectators. That same year, she was a finalist on The Voice Kids. At the beginning of 2018 she performed live in Willkommen 2018 together with Alex Christensen and the Berlin Orchestra from the Brandenburg Gate on ZDF.
Laurita Spinelli comes from Königsau in Rhineland-Palatinate and now lives in Wiesbaden. In 2002, she won ZDF’s Kiddy Contest at the age of ten. After finishing school, Laurita began to write her own songs and got her first job in music as a back-up vocalist on tour for The Voice of Germany. Currently, she is a back-up vocalist for Lena but is in the process of composing and producing songs for her first album.
About the show
The show was presented by Barbara Schöneberger, Linda Zervakis and Peter Urban provided the commentary on individual performances, supported by Germany's 2018 Eurovision Song Contest participant Michael Schulte.
Photo gallery: Germany's finalists performing in 'Unser Lied für Israel'
Seven acts performed in Berlin on the 22nd of February 2019 in the hope of winning Germany's ticket to Tel Aviv: Gregor Hägele, Aly Ryan, Makeda, BB Thomaz, Lilly Among Clouds, Linus Bruhn and S!sters. The show was opened by presenter Barbara Schöneberger and Michael Schulte.
The artists appeared on stage in the following running order:
During the voting window, five acts took to the stage: 2018 Eurovision Song Contest participant Michael Schulte performed his new single Back to the Start and 2010 Eurovision Song Contest winner Lena sang her song Thank You. Known German stars Revolverheld, Udo Lindenberg and Andreas Bourani also shined on stage in Berlin.
Voting
After all performances, the German viewers, the international expert jury, and the members of the Eurovision jury awarded possible scores of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 and 12 points to the participating acts.
The votes of the three groups each value a third of the total score. Jon Ola Sand, Executive Supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest, announced the result of the German audience viewers.
The Eurovision Jury
The 100 members of Germany's so-called Eurovision Jury have been chosen to represent the European music taste in the best possible way. Over 12,400 people participated in a two-stage online survey last August in which numerous music clips from the Eurovision Song Contest history were rated. From this group, the 50 most convincing participants were selected as new jury members. The other 50 jury members were selected last year through the same procedure and are returning this year.
The 100 members of the Eurovision jury are from all over Germany. Most of them are German citizens, but some of them come from Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece, Poland, Croatia and the United Kingdom.
The International Expert Jury
All 20 members of the international expert jury have already been members of the national Eurovision Song Contest jury in their home countries. These members presented their individual ratings. The international jurors were: Filip Adamo (Sweden); Einar Bardarson (Iceland); Bruno Berberes (France); Margaret Berger (Norway); Nicolò Cerioni (Italy); Argyro Christodoulides (Cyprus); Tinkara Kovac (Slovenia); Ludmila Kuts (Belarus); Mark De Lisser (United Kingdom); Anca Lupes (Romania); Florent Luyckx (The Netherlands); Jick Nakassian (Greece); Ruth Lorenzo Pascual (Spain); Sasha Saedi (Austria); Janis Sidovský (Czech Republic); Johannes Strate (Germany); Grzegorz Urban (Poland); Adrienn Zsédenyi (Hungary); Deivydas Zvonkus (Lithuania); and Aija Puurtinen (Finland).
The German jury and the international expert jury were already involved in the selection of participants of Unser Lied für Israel and voted in advance on the songs.
Germany in Eurovision
Germany, one of the founding countries of the Eurovision Song Contest, has participated every year since 1956 apart from 1996 when its entry failed to qualify from a pre-selection round. It took Germany 27 contests to bring the trophy home, but they did it in spectacular style in 1982 with Nicole’s Ein bisschen Frieden and more recently with Lena’s Satellite in 2010.
Last year, they made a return to the top 5 of the competition thanks to Michael Schulte's moving performance of You Let Me Walk Alone.
