Craig’s night at Eurovision

Craig Porteils is a rock producer at heart but this year he’s dabbling in Eurovision. He and his singer-songwriter pal Cameron Giles-Webb put their heads together to write the lyrics for this year’s Greek entry for the song contest being held in Moscow.

The song, This Is Our Night, will be performed by Sakis Rouvas in his second attempt at the Eurovision crown. It’s a change of scenery for Porteils who spent a big chunk of the 1990s working in LA with the likes of Cher, Billy Idol and Fleetwood Mac.

More recently he has produced songs in Australia for Shannon Noll, Wendy Matthews, Shortstack, the Young Divas and Human Nature.

Porteils and Giles-Webb flew to Moscow last week. They will join Rouvas in the televised green room for the second semi-final, which will be screened on SBS on 16 May, and then hopefully the finals on 17 May.

We will be on the couch with the flags -” oh fuck! It’s going to be scary but a good party with over 110 million viewers, Porteils laughed.

With a win there is a lot of opportunity and a bit of prize money and a chance to do more writing. While we are over there, we have meetings with contacts in Athens and Moscow.

People don’t realise how big the Europe market is. If you have good songs and you have a chance, it’s easier in Europe because they love pop music, but with Australia it’s a more band and independent scene. Pop is really acceptable to everyone over there.

Porteils said the key to writing a Eurovision song is simple lyrics and cheesiness.

Their brief was something positive. We put our ideas down and they went with everything, which is great. A couple of little lyric changes just for Rouvas’s English, he said.

We have a pretty good chance of winning and we are second favourites behind Norway.

info: SBS will be covering the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest. The first semi-final will be screened on Friday 15 May at 7.30pm. For more information visit sbs.com.au.