ETNW 2012: The rules

If this doesn’t cover everything, ask me and I’ll answer. And let everyone else know, too, just to be on the safe side ;)

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RULES

1. Songs from any country and any year can be entered for any country and any year.

2. Songs can be in any language and any length.

3. No songs that have taken part in Eurovision or a national selection process.

4. No cover versions.

5. NEW! Singers may have taken part in a national selection process but not taken part in Eurovision itself.

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Now for the explanations… :D

First and foremost, remember that the idea of ETNW is to enter songs that make people go "hmmm, that really does sound like something Albania might have entered in 1978!" or "yep, I can see Portugal picking something like that in 2002". The more plausible your combination – a Russian song recorded in 1980 being entered as Russia 1981, for example, as opposed to, say, a song in Armenian recorded in 2006 being submitted as Ireland 1991 – the more likely it is that voters will view it as ‘authentic’.

That, of course, is the big unwritten rule of ETNW: when you vote, it’s not [just] about what you do or don’t like, but [also] what you think comes across as most authentic based on the year and country a song’s been allocated to. True, it’s subjective, and some people have struggled with it a bit in previous contests, but last year’s results in particular showed that most were happy to embrace the idea. Like it or not, it is the point of the contest.

Well, one of them. The other main one is that although it’s designed to find songs that feel like they could have been Eurovision entries, ETNW as a contest – like all MB contests, really – still encourages ‘new’ music. So while the earlier rules about ‘no Eurovision composers’ and ‘no national final singers’ have been dropped, I’d recommend you look for something that’s totally unconnected to ESC but would still fit rather than something (or someone) closely connected to it that just never made it.

And just to clarify point #5 of the rules, I’m drawing the line at ESC performers as credited on screen or forming part of a duo/group/whatever as credited. I’d still prefer it if your singer never made it onto an ESC stage at all, but if they were Obscure Backing Vocalist #4 for Austria in Zagreb in 1990 or whatever and that’s their only claim to ESC fame (apart from a million national final appearances), I won't kick up a fuss. Of course, the voters might… ;)

Oh, and remember that the ‘any country’ thing is still limited to countries that have actually taken part in Eurovision!

Submission aren’t yet open, but just so you know, this is what you’ll eventually need to send me:

1. An MP3 of your entry
2. The name of your song and singer
3. The year and country you’re allocating it to
4. Your MB nickname

All of this will be repeated when the submission period opens, needless to say. Until then… start trawling through those MP3s!