Sviatoslav Vakarchuk disclosed why "Okean Elzy" categorically refused to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest

Ukrainian singer Sviatoslav Vakarchuk explained why the members of the rock band "Okean Elzy" flatly refused to participate in the international song contest Eurovision. According to the 49-year-old singer, he and his colleagues made this decision because the band had a bad experience in the history of such a music competition. Back then, the artists scored the same number of points as the other contestants but were left without the main prize.

The 49-year-old celebrity spoke about this in the project "20:23" on Zhenia Yanovych's YouTube channel. The singer added that since then, the band has decided to refuse to participate in any music competitions that determine places.

"When we first started, we participated in competitions. There was the 'Pearls of the Season' festival. We went to Kyiv because it was held in the KPI hall. We came in second. They had an interesting scoring system because the maximum score was 120 points, but it was impossible to get them. An important point is that for the first place in this competition, you could get a recording in the studio. A full-fledged album. We got 118 points and were very happy. We were second, and there were 30 bands there, so we thought we would probably win. We were relaxed, but in the end, one band performed really well. And we found out that they also got 118 points, just like us," the singer recalled.

According to Sviatoslav Vakarchuk, during the award ceremony, the members of "Okean Elzy" thought that they would have to share a recording studio with their competitors. However, everything happened quite differently. According to the artist, during the announcement of the results, the jury decided to give the victory to their rivals, and "Okean Elzy" received the second prize, where the prize was four tracksuits.

"After that incident, we made some observations. For starters, we sold three of those sports tracksuits – they were high-end, branded ones. The fourth one was given away as either an advance for a fee or as a bribe to sound engineer Valerii Papchenko. We wanted him to record this album for us. Nevertheless, with the money we got from selling the costumes, we were able to rent a studio and recorded the single "House of Glass" there, which was not released later. The second conclusion we made was that we would never again participate in competitions where places are determined. Including Eurovision. We have not changed this decision and will not change it," the celebrity said.

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