In just two days, we will know who will be Käärijä’s successor as Finland’s Eurovision entry for 2024. Today’s podcast guest just might be that artist and win UMK (Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu) on Saturday. Our co-host Sebi will be there to keep our socials up to date with the latest from Tampere!

Our final UMK interview is with the bookmaker’s winner of UMK 2024, Sara Siipola who hails from Laihia in the Ostrobothnia region northwest of Helsinki. At the time of recording, her song Paskana had reached second place on Finland’s Singlelista and 24th place on the Radiolista!

Even though Sara has been releasing music for five years now, a lot of critics still refer to her as a ‘rising star’ in Finland’s music scene. We asked Sara what she thought of that title, and she had this to say:

“I released my first single ‘Rohkee sydän’ in 2019, but I still think I’m starting everything, like slowly, but my goal is definitely that I’m going to be the biggest artist in Finland someday. So I would say that I’m still ‘rising’, but I’ll definitely be just ‘a star’ someday!”

– Sara Siipola

Sara went on to talk about how emotional she gets whenever she sings Paskana, and has even cried on stage. When we asked her if we’ll see the same emotions on stage at UMK, she teased us with this:

“I would say that [the stage] is going to be a big number, but really, really simple. We are giving enough space for the message of the song.”

– Sara Siipola

Our interview with Sara left us wondering what we’ll see on stage at UMK on Saturday. We’ll be watching and cheering her on during the Final from Tampere and wish her the best of luck!