The Dutch contestants Mia Nicolai and Dion Cooper have become a hot national topic in the Netherlands even reaching the national news. The duo who will be singing their song Burning Daylight under the Dutch flag, have been heavily criticized for their live performances at the Eurovision pre-parties in Madrid and Amsterdam.
Despite it sometimes being a national tradition to “lose faith” in the Dutch entry at least at some point, the head of AVROTROS, in an interview with RTL Boulevard, has agreed that the criticism they’ve been receiving has been valid.
“Mia and Dion have only performed twice now. We let them practice on purpose and we’ve now seen that it’s not going quite right yet. We know our shortcomings now and the entirety of the Netherlands has been able to see that. The creative team that is working with them is now working exactly on these issues to improve the singing in order to give a good performance in Liverpool,” according to head of AVROTROS Eric van Stade.
“We always choose the song first. That’s why it’s called a song contest. And we picked the best song this year, too. It happened to be two young artists. It’s just that this year we’re seeing that the leap to the big stage is a bit bigger than it’s been in previous years where we’ve also worked with young talent.”
He ends his statement with, “There’s valid criticism, but now we know what they’re capable of and we’re guiding them through the process intensively and we have faith in them.”
Despite the negativity surrounding them on home soil, Mia and Dion are still 17th with the bookmakers for the win and they’ve garnered a lot of fan support for their song. Mia and Dion have also received a lot of support from current contestants, such as Loreen when she appeared on Dutch talk show Beau where she said felt sorry for the amount of criticism they were receiving. In an interview with NOS, Douwe Bob who hailed the Dutch flag in the 2016 Song Contest said: “For six months you’re working towards just three minutes. They could bomb for another ten times, but they will shut them all up if they nail the three minutes at Eurovision, that’s the only thing that matters.”
What do #YOU think of the Dutch coverage of their own entry? Let us know on social media @ESCUnited, on our discord, or on our forum page!
