Suntribe gets loud to win Eurolaul

  • 2005-02-09
  • By Steve Roman
TALLINN - Winning out over a Hari Krishna, a beauty queen and four men in pompadour haircuts, the newly formed girl band Suntribe took top prize at Estonia's Eurovision final, Eurolaul, on Feb. 5 with its upbeat pop tune, "Let's Get Loud." The quartet will now go on to represent the country in the first round of the 50th Eurovision Song Contest to be held in Kiev on May 19.

The bouncy, teen-style group, which performed wearing outsized costume jewelry and Daisy Duck t-shirts, garnered 10,583 of the 44,409 votes phoned in by viewers, narrowly defeating "Moonwalk," a '60s-themed tune written by Sven Lohmus, who also wrote "Let's get Loud."

This year's contest included many similar examples of double dipping into the country's talent pool. "Moonwalk" was in fact performed by one of Suntribe's members, Laura Poldvere, while another Suntribe singer, Rebecca Kontus, had her own solo number in the show, "Have you Ever." Likewise the duet Glow performed two of the show's nine songs.

Other notable entries included the sultry and highly theatrical "Gotta Go" by leggy model-actress-pageant-winner Eha Urbsalu, whose style has been widely compared to that of Kylie Minogue. More intriguing was the otherworldly "11" performed by Deva Deva Dance and the Cardinals. It combined an unmistakably Eastern rhythm with haunting Gregorian chant by men in monks' robes.

But it was the irresistible frivolity of four party girls in pigtails that won the hearts of viewers. From behind a row of mock turntables Suntribe belted out uncomplicated expressions of enthusiasm such as "C'mon girls you can rock the crowd / Dance all night, turn on the party / We just wanna hear you shout / Let's get loud."

The group, whose members range in age from 16 to 20 years old, was pieced together only weeks ago by Lohmus, who handpicked them specifically for Eurolaul. If this story sounds familiar, it should. For the 2003 contest, Lohmus brought another four young women together to form Vanilla Ninja. Though their martial-arts-themed "Club Kung Fu" lost out to Ruffus' "Eighties Coming Back" that year, Vanilla Ninja has gone on to become a major commercial success in Germany.

In a strange twist of fate, Lohmus' two girl groups will actually face one another in the Eurovision qualifier round in Kiev 's Vanilla Ninja has been chosen to represent Switzerland at the event.

"It's pretty crazy," Lohmus told The Baltic Times, but said it was too difficult to predict which would score higher.

"I think it's kind of fun because there will be eight beautiful Estonian girls [in the contest]," said Suntribe singer Rebecca Kontus about the prospect of competing against Vanilla Ninja, "As an image, it's great," she said.

When asked about the danger that Vanilla Ninja could use their presumed martial arts skills to destroy Suntribe at the contest, Kontus was undaunted. "We are Suntribe. We have our own stuff. Tribes have spears," she said.

Though the broadcast went off without the technical malfunctions that plagued the 2004 show, the contest was not without its troubles. One entry, "Nevermore Island" which was to be performed by Julia Boman, was disqualified days before the show when it came out that a version of it had been performed for TV by Stellah, an Estonian singer, at the end of 2003.