It’s only a day before Dora 2024 but we are still hearing from participants counting hours before their big moment. In this article, we welcome Lara Demarin who will present herself with the song “Ne Vjerujem Ti”.
Hello Lara, thank you for accepting our invitation to talk to us and present yourself to our readers on ESCUnited. Welcome! For starters, why don’t you tell us more about yourself and your musical idols? Who inspires you the most?
Before moving to the capital Zagreb, when I was 18 years old, I lived in a smaller Croatian city named Pula. My mother’s a musician and she’s been inspiring my brother and me to sing and play since we were little kids. I grew up during the early 2000s listening to Christina Aguilera, Britney, Beyonce, Alicia Keys, Whitney etc., who greatly influenced my musical taste.
You started as the band member of The Funkensteins and you competed in the second season of The Voice back in 2016. How do you look back on those experiences and how did it shape you as an artist?
The Voice was an absolutely great experience. It actually marked the start of my music career in a professional way, I can’t even count how many fantastic Croatian musicians I got to know there. Moreover, some of the people I met there became my long-lasting friends even to this day and I’m really grateful for it. After that I worked as a backvocal for The Funkensteins which is an accompanying band of one of the best Croatian singer-songwriters of the younger generation, Matija Cvek. I’ve spent years with them on many gigs and concerts and the experiences I gained are invaluable. The whole thing showed me the great, but also the bad sides, of how the music industry works, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.
How would you describe your music and sound to people who have never heard your songs before?
What I pursue is bringing back that 2000s R&B sound to new audiences in a modern and original way. I’m still a new performer searching for my own sound that suits me. I’m experimenting and don’t want to limit myself to a specific genre. R&B is the kind of music I listen to the most, so currently, it felt logical to me in that direction.
Can you walk us through the journey of how your entry “Ne Vjerujem Ti” for Dora 2024 came to exist? Is there a specific story about the whole process?
My brother and I were having a regular gig in a hotel. During the sound check, I started improvising a melody on some chords he played. We agreed the idea actually sounded pretty good and we recorded it. Later, I started to work on it, and in a short time, I managed to add the text and got an image of how I wanted it to look on stage. That’s how the first draft of the song was born. Later we teamed up with the producer Hrvoje Domazet who made the song as it is today and added the rap part written by Robert Domitrović. Hrvoje had a lot of patience for my specific sound requests during the production to make it more 2000s and R&B-ish. He managed to realize my vision through the song’s arrangement which took us a year and I’m really thankful for that.
This year you will be participating in the Croatian national selection Dora, and this is your first time participating. What motivated you to submit an entry this year to the competition? Have you considered competing previously?
Dora is one of the few stages in Croatia where you need to have the whole package: song, stage presence, choreography etc. I did consider competing previously, but I needed to be sure the song had what I wanted. While I was writing the song, I had the exact idea of what it should look like on stage. Bits of R&B, hip-hop and 2000s wrapped together in a modern production. It took me a while to decide to pursue a solo career, so logically I was postponing submitting an entry to Dora as well. I waited for the right moment for everything. We are offering a specific sound that’s not typically Eurovision-like. We wanted to stand out in that way and bring something different to ESC.
We know preparations for a project like this take a lot of time and energy. What has been the most fulfilling part of being part of the Dora selection show as of today? Also, what’s been the most challenging thing for you?
Absolutely. Projects like these are pretty stressful, especially when you’re like me and want every detail to be the way you imagined it to be, which isn’t always possible. The equipment, the visuals, the dance movements… It’s all a whole lot of work. It’s really hard to reach me these days as I’m parallelly working on some other projects besides Dora, but it’s absolutely fulfilling!
Then we’ll consider ourselves lucky you got time to answer our questions! 🙂 We’re all curious about your Dora plans. Can you give us at least a tease of what we might expect to see on stage? How are the preparations going considering we are just days before the show?
The rehearsals at the HRT (Croatian Broadcasting Television) just started yesterday and I must say it’s pretty stressful when you have just a few days to adapt everything you practiced for two months for a stage you’re seeing for the first time. It’s even harder when you’re me as I want to be included in every aspect of my song, not just singing, but also dancing, talking shot changes with the directors, stage movements, equipment and many more details you need to think of. The song is going to get a whole other dimension on the stage with some storytelling included and I really hope those three minutes will have you on the edge of your seats!
Exciting! We will be watching for sure! And if you would have to name a single Eurovision artist you would love to collaborate with, who would that be and why?
Chanel from Spain. I was blown away by her ESC 2022 performance and I’m really glad people recognized her talent and work. The energy she offered on stage was just mesmerizing. I’ve been dancing for many years and I can say I see her as a sort of a role model. Dance, combined with singing, is a passion of mine and Chanel’s stage show is one of the best examples of what I think a Eurovision entry should have.
To wrap things up, do you have a message you would like to share with our readers on ESCUnited?
I’m more than glad to be a part of this year’s Eurovision as I’ve also been a fan for years. Dear fans, don’t forget to enjoy every precious minute of the National Finals as well as the Eurovision which is coming really soon! ESCUnited, thanks a lot for the interview. And for the end, you’re all welcome to check out my music on streaming services, especially my favorite one with the modern R&B sound I pursue, Dodir (The Touch) (YouTube and Spotify). You’ll hear it’s pretty different from the Dora entry “Ne vjerujem ti” which was tailor-made for the stage.
Thank you so much Lara and we wish you the best of luck in Dora 2024!Â
If #YOU want to support Lara Demarin’s pathway to Eurovision 2024 make sure you tune in to the Dora second semi-final show on February 23rd and vote!
