The history of music is full of situations like the one in which Pablo Rodríguez, one of the promoters of the success of Chanel at Benidorm Fest (and later at Eurovision), revealed in a newspaper interview ABC. According to his words, everything could have changed since the Spanish-Cuban artist was not the first choice to interpret SloMo.
“Some artists were selected directly by the channel, as was the case of Rigoberta Bandini or the Tanxugueira themselves. But different companies were also approached, as was the case with us (BMG) to propose candidates. Indeed, before Chanel presented us with a performer for the song who didn’t end up winning. The first contestant was a girl from Irun called Aysha. But they tell us there’s a dancer who had worked on the musical “The Lion King” and in pre-production of ‘Malinche’. We saw it and we loved it” he recalls during the interview.
SLoMo, which became one of the most popular songs of 2022 and was about to make Eurovision history, could have been sung and danced by another performer if Chanel had not entered the scene by changing the very fate of the song and his own.
A team bet Pablo Rodríguez who, with the song composed by Leroy Sánchez, Keith Harris, Ibere Fortes, Maggie Szabos and Arjen Thone, gave the artist the chance to make history at the Eurovision Song Contest by representing our country. Lots of behind-the-scenes work that hasn’t been seen and which he talked about during the ABC interview.
“The Eurovision audience, mostly gay, loves divas and we called on an external agency to help us with the image. A lot of financial investment and very intense work. Our strategy was to surprise because nobody had seen the show that was ‘SloMo’ before the semi-final. We had launched a series of videos which generated anticipation. We brought a crazy value proposition, like never seen before with a completely new artist “explains Pablo Rodríguez.
The work of Chanel and the team that made her a success at Benidorm Fest led her to make history at the Eurovision Song Contest. But everything could have been very different…