South African and other artists who would like to participate, can enter songs in various categories. There are 3 categories. which will be listed further down.

A video of you singing the song can be made at home on your phone or any other way you want. You can upload it to your own youtube page (if you have one) and share the link to the video to us at roy@esccovers.com

The video (of South African singers) must at the beginning have your introduction: Your name, location (city or town) and maybe why you have chosen this song. The entire video must be no longer than 4 minutes. When you post your video on your Youtube channel, so hashtags like #esccovers #eurovisionsongs #royvandermerwe #colevandais #competition #singers #afrikaans #musiek #entertainment or any hashtags you think are appropriate. If you do not have a Youtube channel, we will put it on various Youtube channels like ESC Covers own one and we will then add hashtags.

The benefit to the contestants is social media exposure as the videos will be on the ESC Covers website, the two participating facebooks – EuroVisionMusic and Eurovision Coverage as well as various other websites and facebooks about Eurovision. The names of the contestants will be published on our webiste www.esccovers.com, as well as being promoted on various other platforms via articles and shares, etc.

The videos will be judged and judges will be both local and international music industry professionals, media and Eurovision fans (we will not release their names until after the closing date). A winner will be crowned for each of the three categories.

The contest works as follows. An artist can pick one song in each of three categories to COVER. You can also enter just in one category. There is a participation fee of R60 per category, but if you enter in 2 or 3, the fee is discounted to R100 for the entries.

UPDATE on entry fee. To make it easier for artists to enter and quickly, no entry fee will be charged if you enter before 31 AUGUST – the fee will only apply as from 1 September. This is because we do not want a rush at the end of the competition as then there will not be enough time to promote the entries. There still will be no fee if you enter one video in August and the other 2 later. But one video had to be received before 31 August if you do not want to pay an entry fee.

Payment can be made into the following account.

Now we can talk about the THREE categories

CATEGORY ONE – THE LEGENDS

In the first category, THE LEGENDS, are 14 songs in AFRIKAANS by South African singers who are known by a large portion of the Afrikaans music industry. Originally we wanted 20 songs but due to the fact that the backtracks were very difficult to obtain, it was reduced to 14. If you want to cover something in this category, it has to be one of these songs – nothing else. The rules say any singer or duo or group can enter a maximum of 3 entries and you can either enter three from one category or 1 from each of the 3 categories.

Because for this category, it was fairly difficult to get backtracks of certain songs and so not all 14 songs are ACTUAL EUROVISION songs but are EUROVISION related, meaning that they were composed by people who had done Eurovision entries or had been sung originally by artists who either took part in Eurovision or the Eurovision selection. We tried to pick 7 male songs and 7 female songs, but you as an artist can cover a song of a male if you are a female or visa versa. Because all 14 songs are in Afrikaans, you have to do it also in Afrikaans.

Now the 14 songs are:

BLES BRIDGES – REIK NA DIE STERRE

GE KORSTEN – LIEFLING

ANDRE SCHWARTZ – LIEF VIR ALLES HIER

MANIE JACKSON – JULIA

GROEP 2 – DAAR’S NIKS SOOS WARE LIEFDE

HI 5 – JY IS DIE EEN

KURT DARREN – EN EK MIS JOU

CARIKE KEUZENKAMP – DIS ‘N LAND

RINA HUGO – ‘N TIKKIE VRYHEID

ANNELI VAN ROOYEN – EK LEWE

PATRICIA LEWIS – JY’S DIE EEN

MONIQUE STEYN & SNOTKOP – EK VAL VIR JOU

DANA WINNER – DIT IS ‘N WONDER

KARLIEN VAN JAARSVELD & EDEN – UITKLOPHOU

We spoke to several companies about backtracks and some were simply just too expensive. So in the end, a company called R M PRODUCTIONS AND ENTERTAINMENT told us they had a lot of backtracks and if they have any of backtracks we wanted, they will make it available at just R50 each to artists who want to cover it. So if you want to enter one of these, you have to contact this company and buy the backtracks you wanted. If you however have a backtrack already, you can use that. There are the banking details of the backtrack company

NAME – R M PRODUCTIONS & ENTERTAINMENT

BANK – CAPITEC

ACCOUNT NUMBER – 138 167 3889

REFERENCE – NAME OF THE TRACK YOU WANT as well as e-mail address where the track will be posted to you.

On the website we have done individual posts of all 14 songs in this category, the AFRIKAANS covers and the original song so you can go to each one and listen to them in case you want to hear if it will suit your voice and singing style.

CATEGORY TWO – AFRIKAANS EUROVISION COVERS

The second category is called AFRIKAANS EUROVISION COVERS and in there is no list of possible songs. This category is for any singer who has done a Eurovision cover in AFRIKAANS. So any singer who has done an Afrikaans Euro cover can sing his/her song and make a video. There are around 400 such covers. Many singers had done just one cover and so that is all that can be entered but those singers that have done 3 or more covers can enter 3 covers.

There are a vast number of singers who can enter – there are some who had done 6 and more covers, so they can easily enter 3 songs.

It is impossible to list all singers with Euro covers but some of such singers are

Steven Sterling, Tobi Jooste, Lee Scott, Henri Alant, Jasmyn, Leandie Lombaard, Priscilla Smith, Patricia Lewis, Romanz, Guillaume, Jaycee Crause, Candy Benson, Karin Becker, Henry van Dyk, Domenic, Andriette Norman, Monique Steyn, Jennifer Zamudio, George Meiring, David Fourie, Kobus Crafford, Andre van Wyngaardt, Heinz Winckler, Mariska, Arista Paxton, Marli le Grange, Amor Vittone, Rian Ungerer, Kobus Muller, Linda Kilian to name just some.

Both Cole van Dais and Marle Bruyns have many Euro covers and ESC Covers have given the go-ahead that they can enter as well because it is open to any singer who had done a cover in the past.

No backtracks are available here as artists should have their own since they have recorded it.

CATEGORY THREE – EUROVISION CLASSICS Plus any of the other 1605 Eurovision songs

We have updated the rules for category three – EUROVISION CLASSICS and now it will be the 12 identified songs plus the rest of the entire Eurovision entries from 1956 to 2020.

Category three is open to any singer in the world and a song can be done in ANY LANGUAGE.  A song does not just have to be in one language, you can do the song in 2-3 languages in one. If someone has covered the song say in Finnish, you can use that lyrics or you can write your own lyrics. This is the only category where you can do new lyrics. There are 12 songs in this category to choose from of the Eurovision classics.

The songs are: