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The Third Age Of Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu Written by and on February 1, 2017 | 3 Comments

With Finland looking to avoid three Semi Final failures in a row, the National Final of Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu has undergone another transformation. However that show feels less New Music Competition, and more Melfest 2.0. Ben Robertson was in Helsinki to see and hear what has changed.

Finland is arguably the home of Eurovision Song Contest fandom. It was here in the 1980’s that the first ever branch of OGAE started. Even now the Finnish fan club is still one of the largest with over 1,000 members.

However the enthusiasm for the Song Contest still hasn’t resulted in success. Sure Lordi won, but that victory was more down to a continent-wide surge of rock fans than deliberate success. Only once has Finland ended up in the top 15 since then, and is currently on a poor qualification run of only three Grand Finals in seven attempts.

Finland is nothing but an innovative nation, and has already sought to remedy their problems. Broadcaster YLE’s former selection show Euroviisut constantly brought older sounds to the National Final and thus to Eurovision. Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu (literally translated as the New Music Competition), was designed to bring in fresh new Finnish musical talents and let them swing at the local scene and beyond.

There’s been success with this, and acts such as Softengine and Krista Siegfrids being able to launch careers, but also lots of problems through its brief history.

The early UMK years had not just diverse music, but of a staggeringly high standard, no matter if pop-rock, shout-it-out schlager or infectious Finnish language bhangra was your bag. After that, it’s easy to point the fingers at 2015 as the turning point.

The win of PKN’s ‘Aina Mun Pitää’ that year resulted in a last place finish in Eurovision and UMK’s brand value as a music platform diminished. 2016 only brought fan favourites Saara Aalto and Mikael Saari back as the big names. The appeal of UMK as a showcase for new musicians was disappearing.

Which brings us to 2017, and Finnish broadcaster YLE is desperate to get the brand back. As the saying goes, if you can’t beat them…

The New Look New Music Competition

There’s plenty to point out when I list off the differences from the 2016 edition. The show has moved out of the studio and back to the Espoo Arena once again. The Semi Finals were ditched in favour of a ten-song, one-night-only knockout. The big production may still be there for each act, but gone are the huge theatrical numbers with twenty performers on stage. Nobody this year was granted more than the Eurovision limit of six.

In many a sense it seemed clear this was less UMK, less quirky Finland, but just another Nordic country picking, to coin a phrase, a song for Europe.

Krista returns to UMK (image YLE/Mikka Varila)

Krista returns to UMK (image YLE/Mikka Varila)

Let’s start with YLE’s opening number. ‘UMG Bitch’ is your typical in-your-face crowd pleaser with dance troupes, fireworks and plenty of shots of our hostess Krista Siegfrids, and her re-appearance from last year’s is comfortingly familiar.

There is after all nobody more Modern Eurovision in Finland than the ‘Marry Me’ singer, and her Melfest roots were clear in her flash approach with costume changes galore and scripted jokes with the jury spokespeople. Krista was very proud to tell me that Swedish head juror Edward af Sillén had already told her that she was doing a good job after the dress rehearsal. The stylistic influence from the former Melfest and Eurovision scriptwriter was clear.

Those juries are something completely different this year too. While in 2016 there was a 50/50 jury/televote split, the selection of occupation-based juries with politicians, groups of children, and road workers drew a fair bit of stick after the fan-favourites didn’t get the marks to qualify The conclusion was to look across the Baltic Sea once more, and instead make up International Juries just like Melfest does.

As you may expect the usual collection of Heads of Delegations, Eurovision writers, and fans accepted the call to make up four-person juries in representing each country, with jury chairs invited to Helsinki for filming and inevitable after-partying. One must credit YLE for the crude yet clear release of individual jury voting after the show, which few countries would bother to publish. The commitment to transparency and ‘doing the right thing’ is important to make such a move credible.

UMK's Green Room (image YLE/Mikka Varila)

UMK’s Green Room (image YLE/Mikka Varila)

Krista admitted that such influences were to do with Finland ‘really wanting to reach the Grand Final’ and that voting in Finland is ‘different to what the rest of Europe thinks’. YLE’s spokesperson though in the Press Room, Online and Social Media Producer Jyri Loikkanen, was more brutal about the clear change in the selection process when I spoke to him:

“Of course we want to succeed at ESC and a major part of that is the opinion of foreign juries. They [Sweden] are doing great and Sweden in that sense is a benchmark. The whole Melodifestivalen is so much bigger. We have this passion in Finland that we are paranoid about what people are thinking about us, so in that sense we are taking in that notion.”

Making The Music Part Of The Show

Finnish people having a fear of what other people think about them is a well-worn stereotype of this nation, but it hasn’t stopped them embracing the eclectic side of the Eurovision Song Contest in decades past. It’s not surprise when you see something from even beyond left field appear in a Finnish selection.

What stood out for this year was how provocative so many of the tracks were.

The combination of Knucklebone Oscar, Günther and Club La Persé drew much criticism. Surely having three (at loss of a better phrase) joke entries was too much for a competition trying to reclaim some street cred. Never mind the fact those performers were decades away from the concept of new music. Their inclusion normalised the last act on stage, My First Band, who on first glance seemed quite ordinary. However their song ‘Paradise’ provoked with a lyrical message as the lead singer pleads for the woman to ‘please baby, don’t fight’ with his clearly sexual advances. It’s almost as if YLE had selected songs to provoke their Twitter to light up as they celebrated mid-show their worldwide trending accomplishment.

YLE clearly made sure to give each performance visual space to perform to its potential. There was a Krista Siegfrids break between a number of songs during the night as elaborate props took minutes to wheel on and off the impressively bright stage. The Nordic influence was clear in a design echoing both Norway’s stunner from Melodi Grand Prix 2016 coupled to a Green Room lifted from Melodifestivalen circa 2012. Beautiful as it was, there were few moments of artistry that lifted any of the performances.

Consider how the last three Eurovision winners (that’s Conchita, Måns and Jamala if you don’t remember) and how each of those artists brought a routine where their movements, music and voice influenced the stage around them.

Compare that to the fate of Emma, the odds-on pre-show favourite with ‘Circle of Light’, a clap-a-long manic pixie of an entry that was expected to turn up and win by default. Aside from the devastating car crash on live TV of her in-ear being too quiet, and thus missing the beat, followed by her hand-held torch going out, the lack of chemistry with the stage was clear to see. When your title hook is ‘draw you a circle of light’ it seems staggering that no circle was drawn through the entire three minutes. Instead Emma was trapped from the get go in a ring of fire that made her look fragile and scared, rather than the powerful sorcerer I’m sure she wanted to portray.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVwzlSVvzvo

A broadcaster as powerful as YLE should be making each act not just stand out from each other, but stand out to be confident on the stage with their routine. It’s a surprise to me that they generally failed in this regard in 2017, and the conclusion of this left the tender, sparsely staged ballad to impress vocally and sweep both jury and televote in the final scores.

Always Trying The Alternative Approach

The shift change this year to make UMK feel much more like just another Eurovision show demonstrates the clear intent to find a mythical magic formula. You cannot accuse YLE of being complacent, and producer Jyri Loikkanen was keen to state how YLE were ‘constantly evolving’ the brand.

It feels like YLE is desperate to score Eurovision success and are desperate for the spark to make it happen, but brand UMK has taken an almost mortal would in the last two years. With €25 tickets not selling, plans were put in place to make the out-of-town Espoo Metro Arena more attractive with a free shuttle bus to Helsinki Station. The next tactic in the build-up was to release news that Norwegian teenage megastars Marcus and Martinus would perform as the interval act. Their presence alone could probably be linked to a late surge for tickets which made the arena respectfully populated if hardly bursting full. Sadly most of that full were pre-teen girls who were there for one thing only and pretty much vacated en masse come the winner’s reprise.

It seemed poignant at this point that following Norma John’s victory for YLE to immediately announce the new rules for the 2018 competition. These rules allow songs and singers to be entered separately for the first time, which may encourage bigger name acts and writers to chance their arm. It might not, but YLE’s approach is constantly inventive and searching for its formula. Higher TV viewing figures of 1.4 million might be further encouragement, but with none of this year’s songs in the Spotify charts for Finland currently there’s still a mountain to climb.

Stepping into the circle of light (image YLE/Mikka Varila)

Stepping into the circle of light (image YLE/Mikka Varila)

If their need is Eurovision success rather than developing talent, it’s little surprise that their Swedish neighbour offers cookie cutter solutions. After the show the official mingling happened downtown where handpicked UMK entries were shoehorned into a fan-unfriendly playlist and an atmosphere only upbeat because of some generous free drinks. The real passion for the Eurovision Song Contest was down the road where OGAE Finland had more people attending their bash. It was this environment where it was staggering how Swedish the fan tastes were, with not just your classic playing of ‘Euphoria’ getting a spin but also epic Melfest fails like ‘Sean den förste Banan’ and ‘Rainbow Star’ setting the dance floor alight.

YLE didn’t find the magic formula this year, but are searching everywhere they can to create one for the future. Finns might not want to copy their neighbour next door, but sometimes they can’t help but glance over.

About The Author: Ben Robertson

Ben Robertson has attended 23 National Finals in the world of Eurovision. With that experience behind him he writes for ESC Insight with his analysis and opinions about anything and everything Eurovision Song Contest that is worth telling.

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3 responses to “The Third Age Of Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu”

  1. I think that Krista has the UMK gig for as long as she wants it – it might all depend on how well she does at MF this year…

    What with Emma and Alva having total vocal mares and the four acts above really not having any gravitas, it was not surprising that Zuhlke was their only competition, ironically with a song which would have had to have major chunks of its lyrics changed to have been sung in Kyiv…

  2. Eurojock says:

    You may be critical of some aspects of UMK, Ben, but it was the epitome of excellence compared to the BBC’s effort the night before. The staging of the songs was far superior and the use of international juries was also more likely to produce a result that would bring success at ESC.

    Also, (as far as I can gather) none of the jurors were asked to pass comment on the acts just after they performed (which so totally did not work for the UK final and should be ditched in future).

    The only points the UK final had over UMK were that the standard of singing was higher than at UMK and also the absence of sleazy joke acts. I could hardly believe that in one show we had an ode to masturbation and then an anthem to cunnilingus. They must be sex mad in Finland or maybe sex starved!

  3. Alan Sedgwick says:

    Lordi’s win being due to a continent-wide surge of rock fans is hilariously naive!

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