Song Contests: Solid Songwriting Or Luck Of The Draw?
September 8th, 2010 by Lior ShamirIn 2007, Alexandria Maillot submitted a co-write between her sister, Amanda Maillot, and producer, Joby Baker, titled “Revolution” into We Are Listening’s The Singer/Songwriter Awards.
Though the song did not win, it made a considerable impact on our judges, Thomas Scherer in particular, and was awarded as one of only four finalists for the song contest. Thomas, Managing Director of Parasongs in Germany at the time, and a valued We Are Listening panelist to date, secured the publishing rights for “Revolution” after I facilitated an introduction to Alexandria. Thomas pitched the song to Universal Europe for the Swedish artist, Stefanie Heinzmann, and it was released as the third single from her Platinum certified debut, “Masterplan”, in 2008.
The song reached 47 on the German music charts and included in a number of compilations released in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The video for “Revolution” has been viewed more than 900,000 times to date and featured on Perez Hilton’s blog.
This year, Alexandria tried her luck again with We Are Listening and was selected as the winner of The Singer/Songwriter Awards with “All We Need”.
September 9th, 2010 at 11:00 am
This is excellent news indeed! Congratulations to Alexandria and Amanda; I’d wondered who’d written that song, it’s been in the charts here in Switzerland for quite a while! Interesting to find out that it was placed through We Are Listening. By the way, Stefanie Heinzmann is Swiss, not Swedish; I think she’s wonderful!
September 12th, 2010 at 5:14 am
Often talent overrides a judge’s opinion. For example, there are singers from American Idol who have won, but the second place singer, or perhaps the fifth, actually makes and sells more records then the winner. Results are often fixed based on statistics which can cause inaccurate outcomes. In the same way, as this song did not in fact “win,” it was great enough to get publicity regardless.
September 12th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
That’s very true–the winner often isn’t the one who goes on to do particularly well. Besides, opinion on the open airwaves is way more diverse, varied (and less arbitrary) than the decisions of a small cluster of harried listeners. Glad that her songs are reaching a bigger and bigger audience.
September 17th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
That’s right, Stefanie Heinzmann is Swiss. The audience are getting bigger and bigger for this song.