The ESCplus team has talked to Alise Haijima, participant of Supernova 2020, the Latvian pre-selection for the Eurovision Song Contest 2020, with the song “Me me song” to know a little more about her candidacy and the experience that she is currently living. You can read the full interview below.
How do you feel about your participation in Supernova 2020?
I’m really honored because this year was especially difficult to get through the auditions due to almost 200 entries. I am extremely happy I got in top26 and people seem to like the song as well.
Can you tell us about the message of your song? Does it talk about any experience of your own life?
The song is about trends on these days, influencer and rapper epidemy, everybody wants to be famous, often people get judged by how much likes or followers you’ve got. I’m not a decent rapper at all but my cringy rap ironically shows that nowadays everyone can be rapper even if you can’t rap at all haha. The song also contains Japanese references, it is simply because of my identity as a Japanese Latvian.
How will the staging be at Supernova 2020? Can you reveal anything?
I have many ideas of the staging if I will make it to the finals. I’m thinking of dancers and dance moves as memeable as the song already is, outfits inspired by kimino or modern kimono and some kind of clothing reveal, I want to have fun as much as possible on the stage with high energy!
How did you decide to submit a song to represent Latvia at the Eurovision Song Contest 2020?
Actually it was an idea of the producer of the meme song. We were working on my single and after recording, he showed me the demo and told me we could participate in the national selection for Eurovision with something different than the usual Eurovision type songs. I loved the song and the idea, I like fun and weird things, we recorded a whole song in 1,5h. It was a really fast and fun process, I had so much fun recording it as well as performing it in front of the cameras.
If you finally win Supernova 2020, are you going to promote your song in the official pre-parties that take place in different European countries before Eurovision?
I can’t promise anything but I would love to take part in the official pre-parties. Song promotion is a crucial part of Eurovision in my opinion, also I would love to meet other participants beforehand and get to know them if there will be any possibilities. I love making new friends!
Have you heard the rest of the songs of Supernova 2020? What do you think about them?
I’ve heard other songs like many many times, I am going to be really honest, there are songs I love and songs that are definitely not my cup of tea. I love Samanta’s, Mikus’ and Aivo’s songs. But also my entry is not a typical pop, edm song or usual Eurovision song in general, so there are mixed opinions about it too, and that’s ok! I think it is important, that people have different taste thus it makes more interesting to create new songs or even a genre.
You can follow all the news of Alise Haijima on her official Facebook profile. This is https://www.facebook.com/Alionora.
Supernova 2020 will be organized by Latvijas Televīzija, the Latvian broadcasting organization best known internationally like LTV. This contest will represent its sixth edition, since it was inaugurated in 2015. Since then, it has been used as the Latvian pre-selection for the Eurovision Song Contest. A total of twenty six candidates will be the participants of the contest, but only eight of them will be qualified for the Grand Final. This will be held on Saturday, February 8, 2020, and its winner will be the artist who will represent Latvia in Rotterdam during the broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest 2020 next May.