Look Away

"Look Away" is a 2019 single by Darude and Sebastian Rejman. The song represented Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 in Tel Aviv, Israel after winning Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu 2019, Finland's national final for the Eurovision Song Contest. The song did not progress to the final, only earning 23 points in the first semi-final. Background The song, according to Sebastian Rejman, was meant to describe the disbelief about how many in the West "look away" at the millions of people in the world living in harsh conditions and poverty. The song was inspired during a trip to New Delhi while Rejman was suffering the flu. While stuck in his hotel room, he was shocked at the conditions outside of the hotel. He reported that it "looked like a sky fight movie after [a] nuclear war." He then later reported that "it was quite a shock to me as a western person to go in Delhi in the city at night when people were sleeping on the streets and living on the streets." Eurovision Song Contest Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu 2019 Yle announced that they had internally selected DJ Darude and singer Sebastian Rejman to represent Finland in Tel Aviv during a live streamed press conference on 29 January 2019, hosted by 2013 Finnish Eurovision entrant Krista Siegfrids, Mikko Silvennoinen and Christoffer Strandberg. It was also announced during the press conference that the song would be selected through 2019 with three songs competing. The three competing songs along with their promotional music videos were presented on 8, 15 and 22 February 2019, respectively, while the final took place on 2 March 2019 at the Logomo in Turku. All three competing songs were performed by Darude and Sebastian Rejman and "Look Away" was selected as the winning song by a 50/50 combination of public votes and eight international jury groups from the United Kingdom, Norway, Spain, Czech Republic, Sweden, Ireland, Denmark and Israel. The viewers and the juries each had a total of 240 points to award. Each jury group distributed their points as follows: 8, 10 and 12 points. The viewer vote was based on the percentage of votes each song achieved through the following voting methods: telephone, SMS and online voting. For example, if a song gained 10% of the viewer vote, then that entry would be awarded 10% of 240 points rounded to the nearest integer: 24 points.