With this song, Mia Nicolai and Dion Cooper go to the Eurovision Song Contest | for the Netherlands Eurovision Song Contest

Burning daylight works towards a compelling, almost screaming climax after subdued verses and larger choruses. In it, the duo says goodbye to their ‘old life’, in which they always ‘lost’ themselves according to the text.

What is the song about? “It’s an ode to trial and error,” said Dion. “We are all human and we make mistakes. That we really sometimes get it wrong, on a dead end. And precisely at a time when things are not going well, when we ourselves have the choice to go for something better and leave all the old behind us. That’s especially the last part of the song.”

It is an appropriate emotion for the two, who are hitherto unknown to the general public and get a completely different existence. “I’m trying to realize that it’s all real,” Mia said. The two are prepared for all the opinions that will come at them now.

,,I immediately saw it as a lesson: okay, so I really have to watch what I say,” said Mia, of whom an old video surfaced after the announcement of her participation in which she said she was not very fond of the Netherlands. but more on New York. “We are now quite an important duo for the Netherlands, which is very understandable, I really want to do that well.”

At the table with Khalid Kasem were Cornald Maas and Sander Lantinga, among others, who are part of the selection committee for the song festival. “It immediately gets under your skin after listening once,” said the DJ prior to the announcement.

“If I have that, I hope the rest of Europe has that too. That after listening once it just speaks to your heart.” Immediately afterwards, Emma Wortelboer spoke, who said that she found it ‘not a Eurovision song at all’, because she lacks repetitive, recognizable elements.

The skeleton of Burning daylight was written in 2021 by Duncan Laurence, his American fiancée and writing partner Jordan Garfield and Mia Nicolai. Dion Cooper was brought in when they got the idea that the song lends itself well to a duet. The four of them then finished the text.

,,I hope they will remember this moment forever”, Laurence said about the choice to announce the song at a press conference of AvroTros, which was shown live in the NPO 1 talk show. There, the duo had friends and family around them, unlike the former participant himself when he revealed his song in a talk show.

Duncan and Jordan were also the ones who informed Mia and Dion on behalf of AvtroTros a few months ago that they are going to the Eurovision song contest. After that call, Dion called his parents first. “The three of us just cried,” Dion says in a mini-documentary on YouTube. ,,Oh dear, how happy I am for you, unbelievable”, you hear his mother say. Mia immediately came to a beautiful realization. “That’s when I realized that all the hard work of all these years, on my talent and skills, it’s finally going to be seen.”

Duncan and Jordan will soon be involved in the Dutch act in Liverpool, just as Ilse DeLange was with Duncan in 2019 when he won the festival with Arcade. As a former winner, he can prepare the inexperienced duo a bit for what awaits them in Liverpool. “We can imagine it, but it will probably be even bigger and more hectic,” Dion Cooper recently said in an interview with this site.

Mia and Dion will play in the first semi-final on May 9. The final is four days later on Saturday 13 May.

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