Portugal’s National Selection Festival da Canção kicks off this weekend with the first semi final. Fernando Daniel is a first time entrant in Festival da Canção, and is hoping to represent Portugal in Kyiv with his song  “Poema a dois”.

We caught up with Fernando ahead of this weekend’s show to get his thoughts and find out a little more about him before he takes to the stage on Sunday.

Hello Fernando, First of all congratulations on participating in this years Festival da Canção, can you tell us a little about how you came to be involved in the event  this year?

Thank you so much!  My participation in  ” Festival  RTP Da Canção 2017  ” came with the invitation of Nuno Feist, who was one of the 18 composers invited by RTP to participate in the event.
And can you tell us a bit about the song and the team behind it?

It’s a powerful song, about love with a strong message. The team is great, very professional and at the same time we get along very well what makes things easier. If I had to name each and everyone of them  it would be impossible and  I would probably forget  someone. Apart from the composer, Nuno Feist and the lyricist, Nuno Marques da Silva, there’s the production team, the communication and promotion and many others.

The rules of Festival da Canção have been altered this year to allow for songs in a language other than Portuguese to be entered. If you win and go on to Eurovison, will the song stay in Portuguese or might you perhaps look at doing an English version for Kyiv?
We already have an English version, lyrics by Keith Mills and even if we are working hard  for quite sometime now and of course thinking of the possibility of winning the ticket to Kiev ( I guess like any other participant ) , first things first. We have a semi final in almost a week and if we get selected , the final on March the 5^th . We are totally focus on that. An English version in Kiev … well that is always a possibility but we don’t know that yet.
How are you preparing for your performance at  Festival da Canção?

The song itself doesn’t need much but of course that part wasn’t neglected.
You won The Voice Portugal last year, huge congratulations for that! Do you feel that the experience you have gained from a TV competition like that will give you an advantage at Festival da Canção and then hopefully at Eurovison?

The fact that I won The Voice Portugal last December plus my blind audition being chosen as the best blind audition worldwide gave me some visibility and that could help but let’s not forget there are many great singers and composers, the quality level this year is  excepted to be very good.

What are your plans following Festival da Canção? Is there an EP we can look forward to?

Yes, I am already working on it.

Who are your musical inspirations?

 I have many ,  James Arthur, James Bay, James Morrison, Shawn Mendes, John Mayer, Diogo Piçarra, Bryan Adams among others.

Finally, are you a fan of Eurovision, and if so who are your favourite past performers?

I have been following Eurovision since Lordi won Eurovision and I am well aware it is the biggest music contest in the world. Now I watch it as much as I can. Conchita and Loreen are probably the ones that impressed me the most.

Thank you and the best of luck for Festival da Canção!

Thank you!

We look forward to seeing Fernando perform in the first semi final of Festival da Canção this weekend, and of course you can follow the show along live with us here on ESCBubble.