Germany, Turkey seen as Azerbaijan’s staunch Eurovision rivals

Safura Alizadeh, who will represent Azerbaijan at the Eurovision 2010 song contest, is likely to face the staunchest competition from the German and Turkish singers, a vote held on popular websites shows.
Voters on Facebook, a popular social networking website, named Turkey as the potential winner of the contest, while leading the rating with 31 percent. Azerbaijan ranked fifth with 4 percent.
As previously, Google, the world’s most popular search engine, also made its projections on the outcomes of this year’s Eurovision contest. Google concluded -- based on the number of searches made for a particular singer’s song -- that the German song is enjoying the greatest demand. Safura’s Swedish-written "Drip-Drop" song was rated fourth in its popularity on Google.
Also, wiwibloggs.com voters rated Turkey the top entry, followed by Spain, with 37.3 percent of votes. The two most popular entries are followed by the songs from Azerbaijan, Germany and Armenia.
Safura started to sing at the age of three and at six she had her first stage performance and since, she has taken part in various competitions. She is the winner of Azerbaijani talent show Yeni Ulduz, which is the equivalent to Pop Idol. Safura graduated from music school where she played violin.
Thanks to her parents Safura started to show an early interest in fashion, too. She displayed her growing talents in fashion design while working on her very first stage outfits which she created with her mother's help.
Germany’s Lena, 19, will present the "Satellite" song. The German performer is not a professional musician and is currently preparing for a university admission exam. Having won the national contest in her country, Lena’s entry immediately became one of the most frequently played-back and downloaded songs on music websites. Moreover, sales of her song hit a record high in Germany in a short time.
Turkey will be represented by the "We could be the same" song to be performed by the four-people-strong Manga rock band. From 2001 onwards, the band released several highly successful albums which all became top sellers in their native country. Manga won the Best European Act award at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 2009. Manga has taken numerous other awards as well, including those for best video, best band, best song, best album and best performance.
Russian star Dima Bilan has said he expects the toughest rivalry at the Eurovision finals between Azerbaijan and Germany.
Bookmakers have made the same projection. Russian Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said Azerbaijan’s Safura or Germany’s Lena Mayer-Landrut are leading the charts. The third ranking is being contested by Israel’s Arel Skaat and Denmark’s ChanOe & N’Evergreen duet.
On Thursday, the Azerbaijani performer will take part in the second Eurovision semi-final. On Saturday, all eyes will be on the final round of the popular European contest.*