Since 2017, SUISA has been organising its songwriting camps in collaboration with Pele Loriano Productions. Compositions created during the camp have regularly featured at the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) since then. Switzerland entered the race in 2018 with “Stones”, in 2019 with “She Got Me” and last year with “Watergun”. But songs from the Swiss song smithy also found favour in neighbouring countries: In Germany, the song “Sister” was chosen as the ESC entry in 2019 and in Austria in 2021 “Amen”.
The selection process in Switzerland in 2024
There are different ways to determine the song that will represent a country at the ESC. For example, the “Festival della Canzone Italiana di Sanremo” takes place in Italy and the “Melodifestivalen” is held over several days in Sweden; their respective winners then take part in the Song Contest.
In recent years, those responsible for SRF’s Swiss ESC campaign have relied on an internal selection process in which national and international juries select the winning entry. Anyone could submit songs for the selection process by public tender. A total of 427 songs were submitted to SRF for the Eurovision Song Contest 2024, 40 per cent of which came from Switzerland. SRF, RTS, RSI and RTR are jointly running the “Eurovision Song Contest” 2024 project.
How the Swiss ESC song 2024 was created
The song “The Code” was written on the second day of the SUISA Songwriting Camp 2023. The artistic director of the camp, Pele Loriano, put together a team that day in which SUISA members Nemo and Benji Alasu were to write a song together with Linda Dale and Lasse Nymann.
This was the first time that these four songwriters had worked together in this constellation. The team worked together splendidly and the collaboration resulted in “The Code”, an eclectic bohemian piece about joy, acceptance and finding one’s own identity in a seemingly standardised world.
Co-author Nemo sings “The Code” at the ESC
Four songwriters, one performer: Co-author Nemo will perform “The Code” for Switzerland on the big ESC stage. Sweden, last year’s winners, and the “Big 5” (Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Spain) have qualified directly for the final. Switzerland must first assert itself in the second semi-final on Thursday, 9 May 2024, which means finishing in one of the top ten places. In the semi-final, only a public vote will determine who is allowed to go through to the final.
If “The Code” overcomes this hurdle, the song from the SUISA Songwriting Camp will also be performed at the ESC final on Saturday, 11 May 2024, from 9 pm onwards.
