{"id":160943,"date":"2012-02-13T13:31:20","date_gmt":"2012-02-13T09:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=160943"},"modified":"2012-02-13T13:32:51","modified_gmt":"2012-02-13T09:32:51","slug":"azerbaijan-chose-its-contestant-in-2012-eurovision-song-contest-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2012\/02\/13\/azerbaijan-chose-its-contestant-in-2012-eurovision-song-contest-video.html","title":{"rendered":"Azerbaijan Chose its Contestant in 2012 Eurovision Song Contest (VIDEO)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sabina Babayeva was selected Sunday evening to represent Azerbaijan in this year&#8217;s Eurovision Song Contest to be held in Baku, <span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.esctoday.com\/news\/read\/18307\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">ESC Today<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span> reports.<\/p>\n<p>Five singers competed in the final televised show. All participants sang a number of cover versions including Eurovision songs and in their native language. The show was hosted by Azerbaijani president&#8217;s daughter Leila Aliyeva. Last year\u2019s Eurovision winner Ell &amp; Nikki and Azerbaijani&#8217;s 2010 Eurovision contestant Safura were guests of the show.<\/p>\n<p>The process of selecting Azerbaijan&#8217;s contestant lasted 3 months with 119 performers applying to participate in the national qualifying contest. Of these, 72 were approved for the competition.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe width=\"425\" height=\"344\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/muR34bAHJCs?wmode=transparent\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen> <\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Recall, 43 countries \u2014 including Armenia \u2014 applied to take part in the 57th Eurovision Song Contest, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) announced last month. However, as told to Epress.am by the head of Armenia\u2019s Eurovision delegation Gohar Gasparyan, this matter is still being discussed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe applied to Eurovision because we are a member of the European Broadcasting Union. But we\u2019re still discussing how safe the participation of our delegation will be in Baku, as well as other matters. We\u2019ll announce whether we\u2019ll participate in the contest or not at a later date,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Note, the semi-finals of the 57th Eurovision Song Contest will take place on May 22 and 24, with the finals being held on May 26. This year&#8217;s theme is &#8220;Light your fire.&#8221;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sabina Babayeva was selected Sunday evening to represent Azerbaijan in this year&#8217;s Eurovision Song Contest to be held in Baku.<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":160853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}