We know a lot about Eurovision and we want to share this knowledge with you! Therefore we’d like to bring you a blast from the past. Today we look back at Alyosha‘s “Sweet people”, the Ukrainian song in 2010.
Ukraine in the Eurovision Song Contest
The first Ukrainian entry in the Eurovision Song Contest was “Hasta la vista”, sung by Olexandr Ponomariov in 2003. Already a year later, the country had it’s first victory with Ruslana and her “Wild dances”. Ukraine is the only country that always reached the final so far. Ukraine managed to win the contest even three times already: with Ruslana, in 2016 with Jamala and her “1942” and in 2022 with Kalush Orchestra’s “Stefania”.
Evrobachennya. Ukrayina-2010
Vasyl
The road that lead to “Sweet people” being the Eurovision song was quite a complicated one. In December 2009, Ukrainian Television announced that the artist representing the country was selected internally. It was the 28 years old singer and performer Vasyl Lazarovych who got the job. The national final Evrobachennya. Ukrayina was held on March 5. Vasyl sang a total of 5 songs. The winning song was “I love you”, written and composed by Brandon Stone and Olga Yarinich. However, a storm of criticism came up, especially about the idea of giving only one artist the chance to perform.
20 songs
After 10 days, Ukrainian broadcaster NTU decided to have a new national final. “I love you” was now one of 20 songs.
- Vitaliy Kozlovskiy sang “”I-L@VE?”
- Vasyl Lazarovych sang “I love you”, 24 pts, 7th
- SH and BB sang “Ne zhurys”
- OIeksiy Matias sang “Angely ne umirayut”, 32 pts, 3rd
- Zaklyopi sang “Anybody home?” 23 pts, 8th
- Ivan Berezovskyi sang “No doubt”, 21 pts, 10th
- Stereo sang “Ne shkody s uma”, 22 pts, 9th
- Irina Rosenfeld sang “Forever”, 29 pts, 6th
- Shanis sang “Lechu k tebe”
- Max Barskih sang “White raven”
- Vladyslav Levytskyi sang “Davay, davay!”
- Miya sang “Vona”
- DaZzle Dreams sang “Emotional lady”
- Masha Sobko sang “Ya tebya lyublyu”, 36 pts, 2nd
- Zlata Ochnevich sang “Tiny island”, 30 pts, 5th
- Mira Gold sang “Crazy lady”
- Natalia Valevska sang “Europe”, 31 pts, 4th
- Juliya Voice sang “Zavyazhi mne glaza”
- El Kravchuk sang “Fly to heaven”, 21 pts, 10th
- Alyosha sang “To be free”, 36 pts, 1st
A new song
Accusations of plagiarism were made about the winning song “To be free” immediately after the contest. Also, it was said to be published already in 2008. While NTU wanted to investigate this, the final deadline of submitting a song was so close that NTU decided that Alyosha could sing another song in Eurovision: “Sweet people”.
