Once again, Azerbaijan chose their Eurovision entry through an internal selection. After
confirming their participation in the 2024 contest, İTV opened the submission of songs
period, which lasted until late September 2023.
Azerbaijan is always one of the few countries for which we don’t have a lot of updates
during the National Selections season. It is known that after an audition round which
took place on October 29th 2023 in Baku, a jury selected a list of 15 acts, as was
announced by İTV. Among those acts, we could see the name of Aisel, Azerbaijan’s
participant at the Eurovision 2018. That same list was shortened from 15 to 6, on
November 6th 2023.
This February 2024, Eldar Gasimov (Eurovision 2011 winner) as member of the jury,
announced the selection process was almost at its end and international professionals
from Asia and America were involved. A rumour has it Aisel with "Game of Chess" and
Ilkin Dovlatov, Mila Miles & Etibar Asadli with "İnsanlar" were the two acts left in the
running.
However, on March 7th 2024, İTV announce Fahree as their representative to the
Eurovision 2024, with the song “Özünlə apar”. Shortly after, Fahree himself announced
he would be joined on stage by Ilkin Dovlatov, who will perform part of the song in the
traditional Azerbaijani mugham style (one of the styles of traditional classic music from
Azerbaijan, characterized by a large degree of improvisation and proclaimed by UNESCO
in 2003 as a "Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity”).
On March 15th 2024, “Özünlə apar” was the last song to be released among the 37
entries which will be on stage in Malmö.
Fahree was born in Baku in 1995 in a family related to the arts world. He took a master
degree in Law but later he decided to make music is priority. In 2022 he releases his
first single: “Dance”.
Özünlə apar is the Azerbaijan's first entry for the Eurovision with lyrics mainly in
Azerbaijani. It is a modern pop/light electronic song with a heavy but amazing ethnic
flavour.
Azərbaycanın Malmö şəhərində uğurlar!