“Ylva and Linda twins have shined  throughout the National Final season this year. From Iceland to Moldova they were in lots of National Finals as songwriters, producers, also back vocalists  . This year wasn’t first time or not the last time too for them.”  When we shared this interview last year, we have introduced them by this  paragraph. The very latest news prove the exactness of our thoughts about them.

For this year, Ylva and Linda open the season with Türkvizyon, is an annual song contest created by Turkish music channel TMB TV inspired by the format of the Eurovision Song Contest. Sweden will be represented by Arghavan who was born in Iran but moved to Sweden in her childhood. Her song “Dirçəliş” is writting by duo Ylva & Linda.

Persson sisters say : This has been quite a long journey for us to reach Türkvizyon and a lot of hard and engaged work! We were interested in this contest also in previous years and this year opened a door for us to enter through connections we have received through our years working for Eurovision. Therefore it feel really great to be able to share the good news today.

As Escapenews team we talked last year with Ylva and Lynda twins for you!

At first thank you for your reply. And who are Ylva&Linda? Can you tell us about yourself ?

 

12903776_1024996007594441_1656488458_oThanks a lot for this interview! We really appreciate it! We are a Swedish female song writing team who competed with 20 songs as composers, producers and backing vocalists in national ESC finals and JESC during 2013-2016 with 20 songs in 11 countries. We have a great passion for the ESC since we started watching the TV show in -83 when Carola won in Sweden with “Främling”and still aim to reach the big final of ESC one day. We always work independently and closely with artists and musicians around Europe as A&R and then do the composing, lyrics, production and vocal mixing ourselves or together with co-producers/mixers. Wealso do the digital releases of the songs and video editing for music videos.On five of the songs we were backing vocalists in the live TV broadcasts.

No doubt that all of your songs are important for you but there must be a song which you’d written by your feelings? Which one is it?

All songs are our “babies” written from the heart and they have their individual journey. Usually melodies just pop up and from there we find the right lyrics and the sound before matching with an artist. We are very influenced by Eurovision as our source of inspiration when we write songs, lyrics and do productions but also from the latest top-list pop songs.

For a long time you have tried for lots of countries but which country would make you the happiest if one of your songs won a National final. Are you prepairing songs for country’s cultures or everything just comes up ?

We have always aimed for the Swedish selection “Melodifestivalen” and really hope there will be a chance for ut to reach this goal in 2017. It would be a dream come true! We love to write a variation of songs and have always been fans of different cultural sounds, beats, styles and languages which is a great influence when we make new music. That is the true essence of ESC in our opinion and we are really happy that our songs have been successful abroad. We always try to write songs of international style and match with artists.

 

 

From this year which song is you most proud of and which song is dissapointed you most  for their results?

It was great to receive the 3rd place with Eye of the storm in the final of Söngvakeppnin and we are very proud for this achievement. At first the song was submitted with another artist and also with another lyricist, so we had very little time after the song was selected, to find an artist. Luckily we found Karlotta who had been competing in The Voice and she re-wrote the lyrics in Icelandic, recorded new vocals and the song was re-produced and mixed by Kristinn. We felt very welcomed in Iceland when travelling for the semi final and final in February. It was a very hectic few weeks for us arriving from the airport and straight away to the TV studio for rehearsals!

Our biggest disappointments were in Austria with the song Stay tonight that was disqualified in the wildcard selection  because of the strange voting process on Facebook where fake votes came from abroad without us knowing about this. Also in Ukraine the song Overload and our artist was treated very unfairly and rude by the jury for no reason and gave low points. We always compete fairly and by the rules and many hours are put down to each song and cooperation. However, both these songs have gained a lot of popularity on Youtube and Stay tonight has also been released on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/4u0hgOR4Aj7iYTJFxgNwBd

You worked with lots of European singers who wants to go to Eurovision. How do you make this connection. Are you reaching them or are they reaching to you?

We usually act as A&R ourselves and contact the artists to find the right match with our songs, and then keep a close cooperation all the way to the release of the song and the contest. Sometimes artists who are interested in working with us contact us themselves. We are always open to new cooperations and suggestions of really talented artists that we can work with for next year’s contest!

You were the back vocalists in Söngvakeppnin one day do you want to sing as main soloist?

We regularly have Eurovision gigs on events, parties, clubs etc. as lead singers and we have gained a lot of popularity from our shows by Eurovision fans. We also love to be the backing vocalists on our songs in the live TV shows and give that extra edge to the performance. During the times we’ve been backing vocalists on TV in Belarus, Iceland and Moldova it has been a great experience and challenge to help us grow further as artists and songwriters. There is a lot to learn from cultural differences and we have even experienced some rasism abroad. If the opportunity would come for us to be lead singers we would of course acces and we tried this year in the Swiss selection as main artists with the song “Closer to my heart”.

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You have released an EP recently and you also have revealed that you will sing at Euroclub/Euro Fan Cafe on Eurovision weeks. Do you have anything to say to your followers about these?

We had a request to release an EP on Spotify and iTunes with our own versions of the ESC songs that competed in 2016 and we thought why not as we released albums during the last 2 years. We’ve had some really great response so far from our dear followers and the EP can be downloaded here: http://www.ylvalinda.com/ylvalinda2016.html

We are also really happy to get the opportunity to perform at Euroclub/Euro Fan Café on May 8 and May 13 (2016) at 23:00 in Stockholm where we will give you a sparkling show (2 sets) with a mix of great popular ESC songs, medleys, different languages and we will surely iteract with the audience and bring people up on stage. Reallyhopetosee you all there on both occasions! We will also have a performance on 3 September at the Eurovision Cruise at M/S Baltic Queen.