About 10 days ago Cole van Dais, a South African singer, contacted ESC Covers with an idea for a video cover competition in these days of lock down over Covid 19. Cole is the South African female who has done the MOST Eurovision covers and is probably in the top 3 worldwide with maybe just Birthe Kjaer of Denmark and Katri Helena of Finland ahead of her. We worked on her idea and developed a COVER 2 COVER competition. This competition will be launched on 25 July, Cole’s birthday. From that day, for a period of 3 months, singers can submit a cover with a lock down video taken with their phone (or other methods) to us. There will be 3 categories. The first 2 are just open for people who sing in AFRIKAANS, the third category is open to anybody world wide who wants to sing a cover in ANY language other than the language in which the song was sung at Eurovision. One of the songs in this category to select from is WATERLOO of ABBA. It was sung in English at the 1974 Eurovision, so people can cover it in ANY other language but English. The details will be made public on 25 July with all the possible songs in each of the 3 categories plus all details on how to enter, obtain the backtrack etc.
The competition is a joint effort by ESC COVERS website of Roy van der Merwe and two facebooks EuroVisionMusic of Nor Bert and Eurovision Coverage of Andy Mikheev. These 3 will also be part of the judging panel. 6 or 7 more people will be added to judge. There will also be an opportunity for ordinary people to cast votes as each video we receive will be published on several Youtube channels etc. There will be a winner in each of the three categories and we look at having the 3 winners battle it out for an OVERALL winner. There will be prizes but that will be announced much later.
The aim now is just to get the competition out there for artists and singers to make a note of it in their diaries. We will do daily posts on the website and 2 facebooks over things and also have on line shows to highlight the entries. This competition is ideal for singers who want to lift their profiles because with it being Eurovision covers, we will try and have it published in as many social media as possible.
