Introduction

• Participant(s): Blanche
• Song: "City Lights"
  
• Writer(s): Pierre Dumoulin & Ellie Delvaux
• Composer(s): Pierre Dumoulin & Emmanuel Delcourt
• Broadcaster: RTBF
  
• Social media: 
  
• Team review: 

This year Belgium its celebrating its 60th anniversary of Belgian entries in the Eurovision Song Contest. Belgium has been participating since the very first time in 1956, but later on in the 90’s due to the regulations it had to pause from time to time. And this year it’s the turn of the Walloon broadcaster RTBF to select the entry for Belgium. There is a yearly rotation between the Walloon broadcaster RTBF and the Flemish broadcaster Éen.

Blanche is this year’s Belgian singer, whose real name is Ellie Delvaux. She was born in Brussels in 1999. Thanks to her older brother, who is a musician, Blanche discovered her singing talent at an early age. She has been studying the piano and the guitar as well. In the age of 16 Blanche participated at the Voice Belgium and made it until the Semi Finals. Here she has been spotted by the singer and songwriter Pierre Dumoulin. Both started to work together with the producer Tim Bran, who also produced popular groups like London Grammar, Aurorar and Birdy.

The song “City Lights” is a contemporary electro song with a persistent melody, which is a really catchy tune. In the bets this entry has been catapulted to the top position already. Maybe this Belgian entry has the utmost uniqueness of this year’s entries, which is radio friendly and a really haunting chorus. With this contribution, Belgium is definitely one of the favourites this year. Congratulations!

History

• Debut: 1956
• Participations: 60
• Victories: 1
• Finals: 51 (5 since 2004)
• Top 10: 25
• Chances for Top 10: 42 %
• Chances for Final: 38 % (since 2004)

Belgium is participating for the 60th time in the Eurovision Song Contest this year. Due to the fact the Belgium has two languages and regions Flanders and Wallonia the Belgian representative is being provided alternately each year. Well, it cannot be said, which part of Belgium is sending more successful songs, both Wallonia and Flanders are eager to deliver the best quality, which is visible in the good results in the past years.

For the first and so far only time, Belgium could win the ESC back in 1986 with “J’aime La Vie” sung by Sandra Kim. Over all these years there have many good places in the top 10, the closest to win again was “Sanomi” by Urban Trad in 2003 (2nd), furthermore “L'amour ça Fait Chanter La Vie” by Jean Vallée in 1978 (2nd) and recently “Me and my guitar” by Tom Dice in 2010 (6th). Roberto Bellarosa made a 12th place with “Love Kills” in the Grand Final in Malmö 2013, Loïc Nottet could achieve a remarkable 4th place in Vienna with “Rhythm Inside” and last year Laura Tesoro could make another great 10th place with “What’s The Pressure” in Stockholm.

Due to the introduction of the Semi Finals in 2004 some countries are struggling to qualify for the Grand Final. Belgium is one of the countries which had some difficulties in the noughties, only five times Belgium could qualify in the last thirteen years. It has also to be taken into consideration that the competition has grown over the years. The Eastern European countries are making the half of the participating countries nowadays, so therefore some well-established countries have to make the way for the new countries and even the non-European country Australia takes part regularly now. The positive thing about it is that it forces the composers to bring higher quality songs into the competition; there is less place for weak songs. But this has paid off lately.