From Zack: At ESC UNITED, we want to put the focus back on the totality of the entries. That means we want to honor everyone involved, particularly the composers. After asking our readers for their thoughts on the composers that we should retrospectively cover, we got some great feedback and will be featuring some of them this week. Our next featured composer that Roy has covered is Karen Kavleryan, composer of eight Eurovision songs, including this year’s Ukrainian entry “Gravity.”
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The name Karen is maybe not so familiar to Eurovision fans in Western Europe, but it is a household name in the ex-Soviet countries.
Karen Kavaleryan is from Moscow, Russia (born in 1961) having Armenian origin. He has more than 700 songs by Russian artists on his account. He has been active in songwriting since 1985.
He has been the winner of Song of the Year (Russia) award a remarkable 17 times (and was also a finalist an additional 10 times!). He is also the author of official anthem of Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic games bid. He is the first Russian whose songs were officially released in the United States of America (writing for Gorky Park in the 1980s). Since 2005 he has been active in musical theatre creating librettos for 4 popular musicals.
Karen has written the lyrics to 8 Eurovision entries from five different countries. Songwriting is in his family’s genes as well as his son was the lyricist of Russia’s 2005 entry for Junior Eurovision.
Prime Minister “Northern Girl”
ESC 2002 – Russia – 10th Place
Dima Bilan “Never Let You Go”
ESC 2006 – Russia – 2nd Place
Dmitry Koldun “Work Your Magic”
ESC 2007 – Belarus – 6th Place
Hayko “Anytime You Need”
ESC 2007 – Armenia – 8th Place
Diana Gurtskaya “Peace Will Come”
ESC 2008 – Georgia – 11th Place
Ani Lorak “Shady Lady”
ESC 2008 – Ukraine – 2nd Place
Eva Rivas “Apricot Stone”
ESC 2010 – Armenia – 7th Place
Zlata Ognevich “Gravity”
ESC 2013 – Ukraine – ???
5 of the 8 songs have been covered in South Africa with Cole van Dais doing “Peace Will Come.” There is a big chance that early 2013 Eurovision entry “Gravity” will also soon be covered as well!
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Ismael
February 12, 2013 at 19:55
My favorite of his entries is “Apricot Stone”.
Roy van der Merwe
February 12, 2013 at 16:09
Thanks Zack for finding a colour photo. I hate black and white photo’s
Roy van der Merwe
February 12, 2013 at 16:07
It is intresting that he has been able to write for a variety of countries – hopefully he may look at one Western European country soon as well