EUROmission - dein ESC Podcast · Bernhard Schreiber, Johannes Breitkopf

ESC 2026: Interview mit Laura Nahr

·51 min·4 clips

Laura Nahe reveals how her song 'Wonderland' captures the surreal feeling of being lost in the ESC bubble ahead of Germany's pre-selection.

1. EUROmission host Johannes interviews Laura Nahe, who is competing at Germany's ESC Vorentscheid on February 28 in Berlin with the song Wonderland. 2. Laura Nahe is a 25-year-old singer-songwriter from Magdeburg who studied publishing in Leipzig and music business in London; Johannes conducted the interview solo. 3. The episode's core purpose is to introduce Laura before the pre-selection broadcast and explore how Wonderland was created and what it means to her. 4. Laura played classical guitar from first grade, then progressed through drums, saxophone, bass, and piano, describing music as taking 'the biggest place' in her life above school and friends. 5. She says her confidence as a singer only emerged when strangers at public performances told her she had an 'ultra cool voice' — family praise did not shift her self-belief. 6. She studied publishing (Buchwissenschaft) at the University of Leipzig for her bachelor's degree, then spent a year at Oxford University's partner institution before moving to London for a music business master's degree. 7. London introduced her to collaborative in-studio songwriting sessions, which she contrasts with her previous habit of writing songs alone at home on guitar or piano. 8. Wonderland was written on the first day of a five-day ESC songwriting camp in southern France, in a session with two producers both named Sam. 9. Laura says she entered that session wanting to avoid another relationship-themed song and wanting something 'a bit weird or surprising' that would stick in voters' heads during the brief seconds when they scroll through finalist songs. 10. Sam the producer began with a chromatic instrumental passage and then introduced a tempo change that moves from a quiet ballad-like intro to a more energetic section, which Laura describes as 'the surprise moment.' 11. After the camp, she quickly decided Wonderland was her application because the other four songs she wrote were 'more like what I normally write' — without the surprise-moment effect. 12. She notes that polarizing songs have historically performed well at Eurovision, and that her strategy was to write something that either lands strongly or does not, rather than something everyone mildly likes. 13. Laura has been watching Eurovision annually since 2009, and names Alexander Rybak's Fairytale as her all-time favorite partly for nostalgic reasons, along with Heroes by Mans Zelmerlow and If I Were Sorry by Frans. 14. She also praises Think About Things by Icelandic act Dadi og Gagnamagnid from the canceled 2020 contest, saying she believes it would have won. 15. On the reception to the Wonderland snippet, she says the first two days were difficult because of a volume of negative comments, which she attributes partly to a pattern of German audiences criticizing the German entry. 16. She reframes the negative comments by noting in German that they indicate the song has reached a certain level of relevance — 'man ist nicht egal' (you are not irrelevant). 17. Laura describes the music video as a last-minute production organized just after Christmas, completed within a few days; it was one of the first Vorentscheid videos published. 18. The interview is conversational in tone, with Johannes and Laura speaking candidly; the mood is warm and relaxed, with occasional humor about Wonderland staging ideas including a carousel suggestion from another podcast episode. 19. Ideal for Eurovision fans who want to know the creative and personal background of Germany's 2026 Vorentscheid entry Wonderland before the February 28 broadcast. 20. Less relevant for listeners who do not follow European pop music or who have no interest in the Eurovision Song Contest production and selection process.

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