Etter noen dager med usikkerhet rundt NeonoeN´s deltakelse i Eurovision Song Contest 2025 valgte gruppen i dag å trekke seg. Grunnen er at det har kommet opp en diskusjon med EBU om bandet har brutt regelen om at låten ikke kan fremføres eller utgis før 1. september året før. NeonoeN fremførte en versjon av låten «Clickbait» på Zabjelo Culture Festival i Montenegro i 2023.
NeonoeN annonserte nyheten på sin instagram-profil i dag.
Engelsk oversettelse av bandets uttalelse:
«Dear all,
In the best public interest, with the desire to end the uncertainty and once again contribute to the music that brought us here in the first place, we inform you that we are voluntarily withdrawing from participation in the Eurovision Song Contest. RTCG, in accordance with the regulations, will select another representative, and we will be the first to wish them good luck and offer our full support.
Winning Montesong brought us publicity of a kind and scale that we neither chose nor could control. We emphasize, and the facts confirm, that performing a working version of the song live did not jeopardize the Montesong festival process nor could it have influenced its final outcome and our placement. It is also a fact that there have been many similar cases where the EBU has always decided that such songs can participate (one even won Eurovision), as they did not have a competitive advantage over the others, which is clear to everyone. However, we simply do not want to be part of any stories beyond music, nor do we want to promote our original work in such a manner.
Eurovision was never a goal in itself for us. Expanding the scope of our musical activities – that certainly was!
The Montesong festival, organized by the Association of Performing Artists, brought 16 new songs, and that is its greatest value. We want to thank RTCG’s management for their good intentions and their offer to explore other options. We believe they will understand our decision to withdraw from Eurovision, and we thank them for that as well.
A special and huge thank you to our fellow musicians, lovers of good music, friends, acquaintances, journalists, and the general public from Montenegro and abroad, who have given us strength in recent days. Our families have lived through all the brilliance and despair of this process with us, and now it’s time to repay them and dedicate ourselves to them in the right way.
CLICKBAIT continues to live on as a music single, but we fear it also lives on as a modern social phenomenon.
Once again, thank you to everyone. Now, let’s all support Montenegro at Eurovision!»
Hvem som overtar som Montenegros bidrag i Basel 2025 er fremdeles uklart. Det er naturlig å spekulere i om Montesong´s andreplass, Nina Žižić med låten Dobrodošli», blir tilbudt æren først.
