Meet Citi Zēni, Latvia representatives in Eurovision 2022

This year Latvia has chosen Citi Zēni as its representatives on Eurovision 2022 that will take place in Turin next May with the song “Eat Your Salad”. But who are Citi Zēni? In this article you will have the opportunity to know more about Latvia’s band for Eurovision 2022.

About Citi Zēni

The Latvian musical band was formed in Riga in 2020. In Latvian Citi Zeni literally means “the other guys”, but there is an assonance with the English word citizens. In their early days they released a few singles and participated in several summer festivals. It was in 2021 that they released their first album entirely in Latvian: Suni iziet ielas. The album earned them three nominations for the Zelta Mikrofons, the Latvian music awards.

They consider themselves, no more and no less, as the “princes of rap and pop divas of the 21st century”. The satire of their lyrics is aimed at writing thought-provoking songs. The group consists of vocalist Jānis Pētersons, sax and backing vocals Dagnis Roziņš, keyboards Reinis Višķeris, guitar Krišjānis Ozols, bass Memmēns and drums Toms Kagainis.

In January 2022, it was announced that Citi Zeni would participate in Supernova, the annual competition where LTV, Latvian public television, chooses its representative for the Eurovision Song Contest. LTV received a total of 130 songs, a record number of songs. On 12 February, the grand final was held, and Citi Zeni won their direct ticket to Turin, crowning themselves as the winners of the pre-selection after winning over the audience and the jury with “Eat Your Salad”.

To write their song, a lighthearted pop song entirely in English, the band says there were two main sources of inspiration. The first came a couple of years ago when Jānis, the lead singer, noticed a vegan friend of his wearing a T-shirt that said: “Instead of meat, I eat pussy”. He jotted it down in his lyric ideas folder and it was lost for some time. Then the phrase came back to life when he took part in a TV cooking show, where one of the participants was a hardcore raw vegan. That’s when the analogy of making the green lifestyle sexy came up. The band has been very insistent on the “eco” message of their song, although certain sexual metaphors throughout the song do not go unnoticed.

Lyrics

Latvia in Eurovision

Latvia made its debut in the Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm in 2000. Brainstorm’s ‘My Star’ finished third in a field of 24, one of the strongest showings for a country’s first participation in the competition. The country won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2002 and hosted the competition the following year in the capital Riga.

After Latvia’s strong debut in the Eurovision Song Contest, the country went on to achieve its third top-five placing in 2005. Before that, however, the home team placed 24th in Riga in 2003 despite being tipped as one of the ones to watch for the night.

Between 2009 and 2014, Latvia failed to qualify for the Grand Final, even finishing last in 3 semi-finals on 3 occasions. However that all changed in 2015 when the national selection was overhauled and Supernova was launched. Aminata won the first edition of Supernova and took Latvia to the Grand Final for the first time since 2008 where she finished in 6th with Love Injected. In 2016, Justs repeated Aminata’s success and qualified for the Grand Final in with Heartbeat.