ESC 2022: Portugal ninth place Maro with “Saudade, saudade”.

Portugal has chosen a quiet song for the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest. Singer Maru successfully passed the preliminary round with “Saudade, saudade” and reached ninth place in the ESC final in Turin.

As the last country participating in the Eurovision Song Contest 2022, Portugal chose to represent Turin. In the early morning of March 13, singer Maro was the winner of the traditional preliminary round of the Da Cansao Festival. With “Saudade, saudade” (“longing, longing”) she was not only able to liquidate the jury, but was also ahead of the audience. In the end she clearly won the final match, which many considered an equal. The show was moderated by Filomena Cautilla, who also presented at ESC in Lisbon in 2018, and Vasco Palmeram. As the Portuguese candidates for the previous year, The black mamba had an appearance.

Maru started his music career in the USA

Mariana Seca aka Maru was born on October 30, 1994 and is a singer and songwriter. “Saudade, saudade” was co-written with John Blanda and includes lyrics in English and Portuguese. Unlike the semi-finals, where she was alone on stage, she performed in the Portuguese preliminary round final with a choir seated around her. Although Maro comes from a musical family, she initially wanted to become a veterinarian, but then studied and lived in the USA, where she released her own music for the first time. She has been singing since the age of eleven and plays the piano, electric bass and guitar. As she told Eurovisionworld, Jessie J has opened parties and is a fan of Justin Bieber.

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However, these effects cannot be heard in their ESC song. “Saouda, Sauda” lives from feeling the singer’s voice. All of Portugal fell in love with this song, even if there are interesting alternatives at the Festival de Cancao. The universal piece “Dégrá.dê” by Pongo & Tristany or the beautiful musical number “Fome de viagem” by Inés Homme de Mello was definitely attracting attention in Turin. The fear that Maru’s song would ripple too much for some viewers wasn’t true at least in the first ESC semifinals. The song was also popular in the finale – in the end, Maru took 9th place.

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