San Marino: It’s Serhat once again for Tel Aviv
The Sammarinese national broadcaster, SMRTV, has announced that Serhat will be the one to represent the country at the 64th Eurovision Song Contest next May in Tel Aviv.
This will be the second time Serhat will be representing San Marino, as he had represented the country in 2016 with the entry “Ι didn’t know” , written by Nektarios Tyrakis. However, this year’s Eurovision entry will be revealed at the end of February.
Ahmet Serhat Hacıpaşalıoğlu (aka Serhat) was born 24 October 1964, in Istanbul where he grew up too. He started his song career in 1997 but his involvement in artistic scene begun earlier, as he has his own production company, namely End Productions. He was behind several tv productions among which “Riziko” (the turkish edition of the American show “Jeopardy“) which was hosted by himself (from 1994 to 1996 on TRT and since 1998 until 2000 on Kanal 7)
In 2004 he released the duet song with Viktor Lazlo entitled “Total Disguise“ which met success.
He released a remastered version of the song last year in collaboration with ESC 2005 winner, Helena Paparizou.
The same song has its Russian version entitled “Ya+Ti“. For the fans that like Serhat’s specific song listen to the Russian version of it below:
Serhat represented San Marino in Eurovision 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden. His entry entitlted, “I Didn’t Know” , almost made it to the final as it finished 11th in the semi final, due to the jury voting that ranked him second last. Lets remmember Serhat’s Eurovision 2016 performance:
THE EUROVISION STORY SO FAR
San Marino debuted in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2008 with Miodio and is yet to win the event. The landlocked country has participated in Europe’s favorite television show 9 times and has only made it to the Grand Final once, in 2014 when Valentina Monetta placed 24th in the Grand Final.
Valentina has flow the Sammarinese flag at the Eurovision Song Contest four times ( 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017).
In 2018 the Sammarinese broadcaster came up with a fresh and innovative approach to select its Eurovision act and entry for Lisbon, an online international national selection 1 in 360.
Jessika Muscat and Jennifer Brening won the 2018 Sammarinese national final and defended the Sammarinese colours at the Eurovision Song Contest in Lisbon with their entry Who we are. Despite a great performance San Marino failed to qualify to the Grand Final for the fourth consecutive time.
