World Song Contest

THE WINNER

Country: Portugal
Artist(s): David Fonseca
Song: Our Hearts Will Beat As One

David Fonseca was born in Leiria, Portugal, in 1973. He studied Cinema at Escola Superior de Belas Artes de Lisboa between 1992 and 1994, where he obtained a degree. David first began his professional life as a photographer, working for various fashion catalogues. He participated in many exhibitions, both group and individual. He also worked in a radio station for a while. But he is mainly recognised because of his successful music career. Nowadays, David Fonseca has dedicated his life to his love of music choosing to become a Pop/Rock/Alternative singer. Besides playing various instruments and being the author of most of his own lyrics, he is also responsible for the graphic designs on his album covers. He has been influenced by famous musicians such as Jeff Buckley, B-52's, Pixies, Roy Orbison, Aphex Twin, Ryan Adams, all of whom play a huge role in his own musical creativity and individuality. He has also mentioned in a recent interview on “Antena 3” that he has an addiction to the group Yeah Yeah Yeahs. David is currently married and has one son. It all started with a band called Silence 4, formed by a group of hometown friends. They first released the unpredictable Silence Becomes It, in 1998 that was a huge success at the time, selling almost 250 thousand copies (the equivalent to six platinum records). This was a remarkable achievement in the Portuguese musical scenario, which is usually considered as being fairly poor. The album has only two themes written in Portuguese. One of them is “Sexto Sentido”, featuring the popular Portuguese singer, Sérgio Godinho. To complete this great year for the band, which played at most of the Portuguese summer festivals, they closed the world famous exhibition Expo '98 in Lisbon, playing for about 50 thousand people. Later in the same year, in December, Silence 4 was the first national band to sell out at Pavilhão Atlântico, performing to an astonishing 18,000-strong crowd, only 6 months after the release of their first album. Two years after the “phenomenon” in 2000, the second album was released, Only Pain Is Real, selling approximately 100 thousand copies to this day. The respective tour ended in a double concert at the legendary stage in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, the Coliseu dos Recreios, which sold out completely and was released later on in CD and in DVD format. Throughout 2001, Silence 4 went on their last tour. In 2002, the band came to an unexpected and poignant end. With the 21 st century, David’s solo career kicked off with a different sound from what it used to be while in Silence 4. Sing Me Something New was recorded in 2003. In this first solo work, along with his interpretation, he played nearly all instruments and thus, he could now explore a totally new environment of sounds all by himself. The album was recorded in the studios of producer Mário Barreiros, and later on in the Sterling Sound Studios (in New York), by the well-known sound engineer, George Marino, who is connected to some works of Coldplay, Rollins Band, The Dandy Warhols and Sepultura, among many others. The first single was Someone That Cannot Love which debuted on about 150 Portuguese radio stations in a unique way: they were all played on March 10th at midnight. And it soon reached #2 on the National Sales Chart and was certified Gold. The tour of this first record was extensive; it included many big music venues and large festivals across Portugal. Our Hearts Will Beat As One is said, by David himself, to be “scarily personal” and was only released in the fall of 2005, because of the other projects that David was involved in between his two solo works. The second album includes Who Are U? as the first single, described by David as “the song I always wanted to write”. It reached #3 on the Portuguese airplay charts. Our Hearts Will Beat As One was critically acclaimed by all media and was considered pop album of the year in Portugal, even before the year-end. The album went straight to #1 on National Sales Chart and reached Gold status on its first week of sales. In October, 2007, his third original album, Dreams in Colour, was released and the first single was Superstars II, a song that counted with large airplay due to a cellphone campaign that adopted the single.

Official website: http://www.davidfonseca.com/

Lyrics

When you walked in the room
Moving on Vaseline
Coated in petals and fuel
A cover of a magazine
Our bodies came to a halt
Our bodies turned into light
Well I don't know about you
But I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it
Tonight
I can picture you knocking on my door
Getting naked in the hallway
But hey, dressed would be as good
We're like the fish in the sea
We're like the birds and the trees
Don't want to lead
Don't want to follow
I want to love, love, love, love you tonight

You can never expect how many players will took part in an edition of the World Song Contest. Of course, there's an average, about 45/55 players for the last editions, but on December 2007, when the 34th edition started it was to become the biggest one ever. 66 songs were finally submitted, some from countries which took part for the first time such as Morocco and Montenegro. With such a number of entries, the semi finals were more important than ever as they really helped as 31 songs didn't manage to qualify.

The final took place in 2008, and 35 songs competed to become the first winner of the year, which started a few days before. People had a wide range of songs to choose from, with so many different kind of music. From the Argentine Tango to the Belgian cowboy, from unexpected duo, such as Brazil's Vanessa da Mata performing with Ben Harper to Switzerland's singers, Florian Ast and Francine Jordi, representing their country with a typical German ballad. World music, R&B, Pop, ballads, Rock, Metal, Electro... Well you got it, once again we could expected a fight between fans of all these kind of music.

This reflected in the votes as Canada's ballad performed by Roch Voisine hardly received votes from people who voted for Portugal. Both songs battle till the last votes, when Portugal finally took the advantage with 145 points against 125 points with "Our Hearts will Beat As One", performed by David Fonseca. Songs which came from 3rd to 13th were seperated by 12 points.  So one more vote, and the top 10 could have been different from what it finally was. In the same way, if no vote have been received from a country, the fall can be disastrous. For the first time ever FYR of Macedonia reached a top 3 position, but the penalty of 33% applied when no vote has been received led to a fall from 3rd to 26th. This gave the bronze medal to Lebanon and a best position ever to Argentina, which came 4th.

Gallery of Participants

Roch Voisine

Amal Hijazi

Sandra Luna

Hasnaa

Kris Dane