Another year, another round of Germany’s national selection season begins to look for Germany’s representative in the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest in Basel, Switzerland. As one of the “Big Five” countries with automatic qualification to the grand final, Germany hasn’t been doing well over the past few years. The last “good” result was back in 2018 when they were placed at 4th place and 12th last year in Malmo. Is there a lack of a good song (or talent) in Germany or they simply are not getting enough love?
And so here comes an overview of the first week of the hunt for Germany’s next Eurovision superstar, Heat 1 of Chefsache ESC 2025. As always, there were 12 artists performing cover songs or one of their older tracks to fight for a spot in the semi-final. Their potential Eurovision 2025 entries will not be revealed unless they qualify for the next round. Based solely on the decision of four (hopefully) capable juries, 5 artists did not qualify and 7 made it to the semi final.
Overall, the results were not surprising. The non-qualifiers were particularly toned-deaf, out of tune or just plain boring. We even have one of them (Enny-Mae & Paradigm) butchering one of my favourite Eurovision winning songs, Arcade with a horrible rendition and awful vocals. So thank goodness, that entry did not make it through. Another notable non-qualifier is Janine’s rendition of Can’t Help Falling In Love. It was a snooze fest and I dozed off halfway through watching. As for the qualifiers, one of the standouts for me was Feuerschwanz which reminds me a lot of Lordi (Finland). Cosby’s performance of Loved For Who I Am is not too bad either. A bit of polishing here and there, they should be good to go and they remind me of Paramore.
Overall, I don’t think I’ve seen any strong entries that would qualify yet but it is only fair to judge once they reveal their ESC original song entry. A list of who qualified and did not qualify are as follows.
Qualifiers
JULIKA – “Run” (Leona Lewis)
Benjamin Braatz – “Breakfast”
Jonathan Henrich – “Golden Hour” (JVKE)
Feuerschwanz – “Dragostea din tei” (O-Zone)
Cage – “Wrong Place” (H.E.R.)
COSBY – “Love For Who I Am”
Abor & Tynna – “Skyfall” (Adele)
Non-qualifiers
Chase – “Million Years Ago” (Adele)
Enny-Mae x Paradigm – “Arcade” (Duncan Laurence)
Equa Tu – “Gag”
FANNIE – “Easy”
Janine – “Can’t Help Falling In Love” (Elvis Presley)