FINLAND 2025

The Finnish act and song was selected on February 8th via their national final "Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu 2025". The winner was chosen by 25% international jury and 75% televote. Going to Basel is Erika Vikman with the song "Ich Komme" (I'm Coming)

Erika Vikman and her sister followed their mother's footsteps by performing Tango music as youngsters. Erika came to national fame on the 2013 season of Idols where she eventually placed 7th after being voted back as a wildcard  She returned to her Tango roots and won the prestigious Tangomarkkinat competition in 2016. After signing a deal with Sony she experimented with electronic sounds. Vikman then entered the UMK for the first time in 2020 and placed second  Her debut self-titled studio album came out in August 2021 peaking at number-one in Finland. She has also duetted with Käärijä on the song "Ruoska" as well as performing at concerts with Käärijä and Joost Klein. Most of her releases are predominantly in the Finnish language.

"Ich Komme" has a German language refrain but the rest of this song is in Finnish. The progression of the song is chorus - pre chorus - chorus and this runs through twice. After the second chorus the beat becomes the predominant sound and it slowly becomes faster and harder The chanting in the background returns which Erika sings on top of showing her upper register. The staging starts very dark focusing on Erika only and as the song progresses more colours enter the mix. Erika is alone on stage for the entire 3 minutes but at no point does the stage feel empty or boring. She is wearing a shiny back outfit with gold embellishments on the front and sports a chunky gold chain necklace. Around the stage she has to hand a number of microphone stands which are incorporated into her choreography. At the very end she is lifted above the stage my a giant microphone pole as the song reaches its crescendo. Her name then appears in big red letters on the backdrop behind her.

This entry has a clear audio-visual identity and, notwithstanding the language, carries on perfectly from recent Finnish entries. The song has an easily repeated chanted chorus which you could hear being sang along to by the crowd in the hall. The execution of the entry was very tight, underlining the attention to detail by Erika, her team and the show producers. At times, particularly the verse and pre-chorus, the backing vocals were turned right up although her voice was pretty good for the rest of it. This is a crowd pleaser and will do better in the televote than the jury although there is the capacity to improve the vocal.  Erika is alone on stage but she performs with confidence and personality and she doesn't need anybody else. It is also striking - possibly on purpose - that although the lyrics are sexually driven, the stage show is more playful and less driven by the Finnish text. This keeps the show provocative in a 'less is more' kind of way. It will be interesting to see if the end prop will be allowed/catered for in Basel. 

ARTIST - Erika Vikman

SONG - Ich Komme

WRITING/PRODUCTION CREDITS - Christel Roosberg, Jori Roosberg