As previously reported, Emma Gale, a 55-year-old who lives in Weymouth, had been working alongside three Eurovision hopefuls in Croatia, Norway and Latvia for a spot in the live finals in May.
Emma Gale (Image: Markfreegardcamera) Now, following a competition in Croatia, the song Poison Cake by Marko Bosjnak co-written by Emma, will make it to the semi-finals on Tuesday, May 13.
Emma Gale with Bas Wissink from the Netherlands and Ben Pyne from Ireland at the Croatia final in Opatija (Image: Emma Gale)Speaking about the achievement after recovering from the after-party, Emma said: “It’s still not hit me yet, I never expected it or let myself dream about it, even now it’s still not completely processed. It could have such a huge impact on my songwriting career.
“We left the UK on Wednesday to get down to Zagreb, and on Thursday we travelled by bus to Opatija, a beautiful seaside town that reminded me a lot of Weymouth.
“I didn’t want to see rehearsals as I wanted to wait for the performance and it was amazing to see a song you wrote performed live in front of an audience.
The Croatian writing team; Ben Pyne, Emma Gale, Bas Wissink, Marko Bošnjak, Filip Majdak (Image: Emma Gale) “Marko had a sore throat and we were stressed that he hadn’t been hitting the right notes but we made it to the final on Sunday.
“The Croatian public are conservative and quite hard to crack so we knew it wasn’t going to be easy but Marko gave a stunning performance.”
The song was ahead by 60 points in the Croatian final before the public vote, which was between them and Ojen for a space in the Eurovision semi-finals in Basel.
Emma Gale with the Poison Cake team at the Croatia final in Opatija (Image: Emma Gale) Describing the moments, Emma said: “When it came down to voting, we won the jury vote, but had to wait on the public vote. You watch it on TV and it really is that tense, to actually be there was incredible. It was like we were on a delay though as we don’t speak the language well, and had to get our team to translate the numbers from the public vote. We ended up in fourth but got 37 points to win. It was really really close, which made it all the more incredible.
“We’re just looking forward to enjoying the experience at Basel, and I’m so grateful for the support its amazing, and if we do go through to the final, please vote Croatia.”
Emma’s other two written songs, Sulale by Nora Jabi and Latvia’s entry Monster, sung by Grēta Grantiņa, sadly did not make it to the Basel semi-final session. “To see Nora sing in front of 10,000 people in Oslo was amazing, we were really pleased with her performance despite coming fourth or fifth over all.”