"Look Away" is a 2019 single by

Darude Toni-Ville Henrik Virtanen (; born 17 July 1975), better known by his stage name Darude (), is a Finnish DJ and record producer from Eura, Satakunta. His music is characterised by its progressive/uplifting style. He started making music in 1995 ...

and

Sebastian Rejman Sebastian Rejman (born 13 January 1978) is a Finnish singer, actor, and television host. He is the singer and guitarist of the band The Giant Leap. While Giant Leap has been on hiatus, Rejman founded a new band called Sebastian & The 4th Line B ...

. The song represented Finland in the

Eurovision Song Contest 2019 The Eurovision Song Contest 2019 was the 64th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Tel Aviv, Israel, following the country's victory at the with the song "Toy" by Netta. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union ...

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

after winning ''Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu 2019'', Finland's national final for the

Eurovision Song Contest The Eurovision Song Contest (), often known simply as Eurovision, is an international Music competition, song competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) among its members since 1956. Each participating broadcaster ...

. The song did not progress to the final, only earning 23 points in the first semi-final.

Background

The song, according to Sebastian Rejman, was meant to describe the disbelief about how many in the West "look away" at the millions of people in the world living in harsh conditions and poverty. The song was inspired during a trip to

New Delhi New Delhi (; ) is the Capital city, capital of India and a part of the Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Parliament ...

while Rejman was suffering the flu. While stuck in his hotel room, he was shocked at the conditions outside of the hotel. He reported that it "looked like a sky fight movie after nuclear war." He then later reported that "it was quite a shock to me as a western person to go in Delhi in the city at night when people were sleeping on the streets and living on the streets."

Eurovision Song Contest

''Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu 2019''

Yle Yleisradio Oy (; ), abbreviated as Yle () (formerly styled in all uppercase until 2012), translated into English as the Finnish Broadcasting Company, is Finland's national public broadcasting company, founded in 1926. It is a joint-stock comp ...

announced that they had internally selected DJ

and singer

to represent Finland in Tel Aviv during a live streamed press conference on 29 January 2019, hosted by 2013 Finnish Eurovision entrant

Krista Siegfrids Kristin "Krista" Siegfrids (born 4 December 1985) is a Finnish singer and television presenter. She represented Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2013 with her entry " Marry Me". Siegfrids' debut album, named '' Ding Dong!'', was released ...

Mikko Silvennoinen Mikko Silvennoinen (14 May 1975 in Kiihtelysvaara) is a Finnish television host, journalist and producer. At 18, he started as a host of the music programme ''Jyrki''. He was one of the first well-known faces of the show. After hosting ''Jyrki'' ...

and Christoffer Strandberg. It was also announced during the press conference that the song would be selected through ''2019'' with three songs competing. The three competing songs along with their promotional music videos were presented on 8, 15 and 22 February 2019, respectively, while the final took place on 2 March 2019 at the Logomo in

Turku Turku ( ; ; , ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Southwest Finland. It is located on the southwestern coast of the country at the mouth of the Aura River (Finland), River Aura. The population of Turku is approximately , while t ...

. All three competing songs were performed by Darude and Sebastian Rejman and "Look Away" was selected as the winning song by a 50/50 combination of public votes and eight international jury groups from the United Kingdom, Norway, Spain, Czech Republic, Sweden, Ireland, Denmark and Israel. The viewers and the juries each had a total of 240 points to award. Each jury group distributed their points as follows: 8, 10 and 12 points. The viewer vote was based on the percentage of votes each song achieved through the following voting methods: telephone, SMS and online voting. For example, if a song gained 10% of the viewer vote, then that entry would be awarded 10% of 240 points rounded to the nearest integer: 24 points. "Look Away" would dominate both the jury and the televote, winning by a wide margin with a total of 244 points.

At Eurovision

On 28 January 2019, a special allocation draw was held which placed each country into one of the two semi-finals, as well as which half of the show they would perform in. Finland was placed into the first semi-final, to be held on 14 May 2019, and was scheduled to perform in the first half of the show. Once all the competing songs for the 2019 contest had been released, the running order for the semi-finals was decided by the show's producers rather than through another draw, so that similar songs were not placed next to each other. Finland performed in position 3. It did not qualify for the final.

Track listing

References

{{Authority control Eurovision songs of 2019 Eurovision songs of Finland Darude songs 2019 songs