French Eurovision entry Slimane cuts rehearsal performance short to give unexpected speech about “peace”
nme.comEurovision entry Slimane has interrupted his own rehearsal performance to give an unexpected speech about “peace”.During rehearsals today, Slimane made a surprising change to his song ‘Mon Amour’, where he replaced his a capella section with a speech about “peace”.Footage of the performance shows the French-Algerian singer saying: “When I was a child, I dreamed of music.
I dreamed about this dream – to be a singer, to sing about peace. We must be United by Music, yes, but with love and peace. Everyone wants to sing their song but they want to be united by love and peace.”Eurovision has rules in place forbidding political statements or lyrics; it is unclear whether there will be penalties given for Slimane’s speech.The message may be alluding to the controversial inclusion of Israel in this year’s competition, who have faced several calls to be excluded amongst their role in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Eurovision organisers the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) have doubled down on this decision saying: “There are competition rules and you need to follow the competition rules and take decisions based on these competition rules.
If you were to exclude Kan outside of these competition rules, that would have been a political decision, as such, which we cannot take.”Slimane just said a speech and refused to do his acapella part during the family show.
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