Finland is re-inventing its national selection for Eurovision, trying to wash as much of the ESC out of the mix as only possible.
The classic name "Euroviisut" has been ditched for the new "UMK" (The Competition for New Music), which is supposed to be an independent hit song contest in its own right.
The winner will also be Finland's entrant for Baku, but focus will be put exclusively on finding hit songs that could storm the domestic hit charts. Eurovision is just a bonus, the icing on the cake for the winner.
Out of 540 submitted entries, a professional jury has whittled the number of songs down to forty hopefuls that were published online this week for everyone to hear and see.
The audience can vote for the songs online, but that is just a fun feature. In the end the jury will select the twelve finalists as they please, not necessarily paying any attention to what the audience has liked.
The hottest names of contemporary Finnish music are keeping as firm a distance from this new competition as they have done with Euroviisut for the last few years, but among the forty contenders there are quite a few songs that could turn out quite nicely with some work.
There are bit too many hastily produced electropop entries and the old Finnish lack of decent choruses persists. But here and there, you can find some pretty good pop songs. Finland surely has a chance for 2012.
And there is a song in Swedish - for the first time since 1994. I keep my fingers crossed for Pernilla Karlsson to make it far in the competition and for her not to change the language during the competition.
For the time being, you can find the forty songs here. Which one would you like to see in Baku?
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