Samanta Poļakova was born on the 31 March 1989. She is better known as Samanta Tīna. She is a Latvian singer, songwriter and composer.
After having attempted to represent her country in the Eurovision song contest five times earlier (in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2019), she won the national selection SUPERNOVA in 2020 and was to represent LATVIA in the Eurovision song contest in 2020 that was to be held in Rotterdam, the Netherlands with the song "Still breathing". Due to the contest being cancelled, she will represent her country in 2021 instead with a new song "THE MOON IS RISING". She had also competed in the Lithuanian pre-selection twice (in 2013 and 2017). She was also in the Lithuanian version of THE VOICE.
On first listen, there’s a lot to take in here. The Vocoder style rhythm track makes for a rather unsettling start which soon morphs into something reminiscent of Lea Sirk – Hvala, ne! complete with a ‘stop the music’ section mid way through before we launch into the second act and a much darker, more forceful tone.
The strong woman message of the song is delivered loud and clear but in a much more creative and artistic way than the similarly themed Russian entry by Manzina.
This is a strong entry from Latvia and the complexity of the song and the fact that it requires multiple listens to fully appreciate, might be a positive in helping it overcome the ‘fatigue’ that many songs suffer from after repeat listens.
Add some decent staging and Latvia could well have a very good chance of progressing to the Final in Rotterdam.