Knocknacarra’s Niall Mooney has co-written one of the songs which will be competing to represent Ireland at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
Niall’s song ‘It’s For You’ will be sung by former Eurovision winner Niamh Kavanagh at the contest to find the song to represent the nation on The Late late Show tomorrow night.
Should ‘It’s For You’ make it through, it will be the second such success for the writing team of Niall Mooney and Sweden’s Jonas Gladnikoff, who wrote Ireland’s 2009 Eurovision entry ‘Et Cetera’. However for ‘It’s For You’ the pair have also been joined by Lina and Marten Eriksson, two of Sweden’s most successful writing/production partnerships.
Jonas and Niall have been collaborating for a number years clocking up a large number of National Final appearances around Europe including Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Albania.
“After last year it is obvious Ireland are going to need something really special to get a high position in the contest,” says Niall. The answer presented itself when he heard Niamh Kavanagh singing in the National Concert Hall.
“Her voice literally raised the roof,” says Niall. “I got talking to Niamh a few months later and she said she’d consider it only if she had a great song. That was the hard bit. Jonas and I literally spent months writing but nothing was really good enough. Then Lina and Marten joined the collaboration and the whole thing clicked.”
Marten and Lina have had many hits across Europe. Their biggest successes have been writing for Simon Cowell’s Pop Idol in both Sweden and Germany. Lina co-wrote the Swedish Pop Idol winners’ song in 2007 ‘This moment’ which went double platinum overnight. Amongst others they also recorded a song and video with Rybak last year and to top it off Marten produced ‘Et Cetera’ for Ireland.
