Iceland‘s Fairy, Maria Olafs
Iceland represented by Maria Olafs, the “fairy“ of the 60 th anniversary of the bigest TV Show in Europe. Maria will sing “Unbroken“ in the second semifinal at the 21 st of May in Vienna, Austria.
Maria Olafs is 22 years old, and was born on 2nd February 1993 in Blönduós, North Iceland. She has been singing as long as she can remember and comes from a musical family. Her father sings in a male voice choir and her oldest sister competed in Pop Idol when Maria was ten. She lived in Mosfellsbær, a suburb of Reykjavík, at the time. Maria started singing in a school choir and took some acting lessons at the local theatre company. Singing and acting both come naturally to Maria who started performing professionally in children‘s plays and musicals at the tender age of ten.
Maria has already had more stage experience than most of her friends. In 2007 she had a small role in children‘s‘ play Skilaboðaskjóðan, which was staged by The National Theatre in Reykjavík. She played the role of Louisa von Trapp in the Sound of Music in the Municipal Theatre in Reykjavík in 2009 – the original movie of the show is one of her all-time favourites. In the same year she played the part of a young Michael Jackson in a tribute show at Reykjavík‘s Broadway Club. In 2014 Maria took the leading role of Ronja the Robber‘s Daugther in Mosfellsbær Theater Group‘s production of Astrid Lindgren‘s play of the same name.
Maria has written some songs but she‘s not prepared to let anyone outside her family hear them quite yet. She plays the piano and is currently trying to master a guitar she recently bought. Maria is a great admirer of Whitney Houston, Celine Dion and many more and she adores the Eurovision Song Contest. She is currently studying to become a music, entertainment and teacher at the University of Iceland and aiming at working as a singer and actress in the future.
Maria started working with the StopWaitGo songwriting team in 2012 when still a student at Verzlunarskóli Íslands high school. Ever since then, SWG and Maria have been creating all kinds of musical work together. Maria has recorded the vocals for a large variety of demos the songwriting team has been working on, but this is the first time she has featured in the finished version of one of their songs. When the StopWaitGo threesome wrote the song Unbroken for this year‘s Söngvakeppnin the guys had Maria in mind and the song perfectly fits her vocal range. She agreed to sing the song but did not expect to win the contest, so the victory came as a total surprise. This is the first time Maria has competed in a song contest and she is exited to be participating in Eurovision Song Contest 2015 in Vienna in May.
The songwriting and production company StopWaitGo was founded in 2010 by Ásgeir Orri Ásgeirsson (born 1990), Pálmi Ragnar Ásgeirsson (born 1989) and Sæþór Kristjánsson (born 1990). StopWaitGo has established itself as a leading music production company in Iceland and abroad, producing pop music, commercial jingles and music for TV shows and films.
The brothers Ásgeir and Pálmi started writing songs soon after they taught themselves to play guitar and keyboards when they were ten. Ásgeir Orri and Pálmi Ragnar formed a rock group when they were thirteen and made an album produced by Ólafur Arnalds.
The brothers knew Sæþór Kristjánsson from an early age and they started making music together after hearing a recording on the internet which featured Sæþór playing guitar. The guys formed the hip-hop unit Kicks! which had a radio hit with the song Party Department. The collaboration continued at their high school, Verzlunarskóli Íslands, which is known for putting on very high quality music shows every year. The guys were involved in a wide variety of musical activities and got their big break when they were asked to write songs for the TV series ‘Steindinn okkar‘. One of these songs, “Geðveikt Fínn Gaur”, was pretty successful, spending two weeks on top of the Icelandic Charts. Since 2010 they have had seven number 1 singles including this year’s Eurovision entry “Unbroken”. They also hold the record for most consecutive weeks at number 1 with the song “Louder”, performed by comedian and entertainer DJ MuscleBoy.
The production trio has written songs for Iceland’s biggest pop artists and also helped to bring new talent such as Maria Olafsdottir onto the pop music scene. They also had a UK hit with the song Disco Love in 2013; it was a hit for The Saturdays all over Europe and peaked at No.5 on the official UK singles charts.
They currently live in Los Angeles where they have been writing songs for different artists.
StopWaitGo wrote the song “Dönsum Burtu Blús” for Söngvakeppnin 2014, performed by Sverrir Bergmann, singer and radio show host. They decided to participate in Söngvakeppnin 2015, submitting two songs which were both selected to compete in the semi-final heats to choose the finalists for Söngvakeppnin.
According to the Söngvakeppnin rules all songs have to be performed in Icelandic in the semi-final heats. StopWaitGo usually write their songs in English so they had to translate the lyrics for the songs to be able to qualify. Their first song “Once Again” became “Í Síðasta Skipti”. It was composed for singer Friðrik Dór and was one of three songs competing in the first heat that got through to the finals. The other song, “Unbroken”, became “Lítil skref” in Icelandic. It was composed one evening especially for Maria Olafs, taking the range of her voice into special consideration.
Both songs received top votes from the jury and televoters, making StopWaitGo the first composers ever to have both songs in the last head-to-head duel section of the Icelandic Eurovision final. The song Unbroken, performed by Maria Olafs, won the contest. She will be performing it in Vienna and Friðrik Dór will be among those singing backing vocals.
