Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019
Finland participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 with the song "Look Away" written and performed by Ville Virtanen under the stage name Darude and Sebastian Rejman. Darude and Sebastian Rejman were internally selected by the Finnish broadcaster (Yle) in January 2019 to represent the nation at the 2019 contest in Tel Aviv, Israel. The national final 2019 was organised in order to select the song that Darude and Rejman would perform. Three songs were selected to compete in the national final on 2 March 2019 where the 50/50 combination of votes from eight international jury groups and votes from the public selected "Look Away" as the winning song. Finland was drawn to compete in the first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest which took place on 14 May 2019. Performing during the show in position 3, "Look Away" was not announced among the top 10 entries of the first semi-final and therefore did not qualify to compete in the final. It was later revealed that Finland placed seventeenth (last) out of the 17 participating countries in the semi-final with 23 points. Background Prior to the 2019 contest, Finland had participated in the Eurovision Song Contest fifty-two times since its first entry in 1961. Finland has won the contest once in 2006 with the song "Hard Rock Hallelujah" performed by Lordi. In the 2018 contest, "Monsters" performed by Saara Aalto managed to qualify Finland to the final for the first time since 2014 and placed twenty-fifth. The Finnish national broadcaster, (Yle), broadcasts the event within Finland and organises the selection process for the nation's entry. Yle confirmed their intentions to participate at the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest on 13 September 2018. Finland's entries for the Eurovision Song Contest have been selected through national final competitions that have varied in format over the years. Between 1961 and 2011, a selection show that was often titled highlighted that the purpose of the program was to select a song for Eurovision. However, since 2012, the broadcaster has organised the selection show (UMK), which focuses on showcasing new music with the winning song being selected as the Finnish contest entry for that year. In 2018, Yle opted to internally select the artist with the song selected through , a procedure that continued for the Finnish entry for the 2019 contest as announced by the broadcaster along with their participation confirmation. Before Eurovision Artist selection Yle announced that they had internally selected DJ Darude and singer Sebastian Rejman to represent Finland in Tel Aviv during a live streamed press conference on 29 January 2019, hosted by 2013 Finnish Eurovision entrant Krista Siegfrids, Mikko Silvennoinen and Christoffer Strandberg. It was also announced during the press conference that their song would be selected through 2019 with three songs competing. Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu 2019 2019 was the eighth edition of (UMK), the music competition that selects Finland's entries for the Eurovision Song Contest. The three competing songs along with their promotional music videos were presented on 8, 15