Pierre Dumoulin, the Belgian purveyor of the Eurovision Song Contest: ‘Don’t look at who won last year’

Do you remember Marc and Dirk Paelinck? There was a time when the brothers made the press every year in the weeks before the Eurovision Song Contest because they once again had a song in the competition. ‘1 Life’ by Xandee and ‘Sister’ by Sergio and the Ladies were their writings, but Marc also wrote songs for Belarus and Moldova.

It seems that our country has a new Paelinck with Pierre Dumoulin. In 2017, he co-wrote ‘City Lights’, the song with which Blanche finished fourth; two years later he delivered ‘Wake Up’ for Eliot and he was also behind the controls for ‘Before The Party is Over’ by Mustii.

This is not a story about a childhood dream or a master plan. Even more: Dumoulin, known across the language border as the singer-guitarist of the indie band Roscoe, had never watched the Eurovision Song Contest before his work with Blanche. ‘City Lights’ was even the first song he ever wrote for someone else, together with keyboardist Manu Delcourt of Roscoe and Blanche himself. “Ellie (Delvaux, as Blanche is really called, JVL) already had [PIAS] signed and we worked on music together. The Eurovision Song Contest did not fit into our plans, we even refused the RTBF’s request three times. On the day of the deadline they asked again, only a few minutes before the deadline did Ellie give her approval. She assumed we wouldn’t be chosen anyway.”

Thomas ‘Mustii’ Mustin was also in the studio with Dumoulin before the Walloon public broadcaster came knocking. “When we received the question, Thomas quickly came up with ‘Before the Party is Over’. The song is very important to him personally, it shows how he has blossomed as a person in recent years. The day we wrote that song was a day like those described in music documentaries. Everything just worked. I came up with the chords, Thomas with the melody. He thought we needed a choir. My studio is in the basement of a co-working space, so we found singers quickly.”

Willy-nilly

Dumoulin would never participate in the Eurovision Song Contest with Roscoe. “I am the singer of the group unwillingly, I prefer to stay out of the spotlight. That is the common thread in my career: what I don’t want to do at first turns out to be not so bad after all.”

This also applies to writing for the Eurovision Song Contest, because Dumoulin feels good in the shadow of the largest music platform in the world. He met many songwriters there and has already participated in the preselection in other countries. “Four years ago, when the Eurovision Song Contest was canceled due to corona, the Swiss act Gjon’s Tears was going to perform my song ‘Répondez-moi’. The following year I took my chance again, but my song finished second in the Swiss preliminaries. The winning song was written by Wouter Hardy, one of the writers behind ‘Arcade’ by Duncan Laurence. I have also taken part in the preselection in Bulgaria.”

“The nice thing is that the composers of the winning song are always showered with congratulations from colleagues. ‘Congratulations, your song was better’: that is very common to say to each other in the Eurovision bubble. In my experience, that is rare in other projects, but here it is all about the songs.”

Under the name Kargo, Dumoulin gives master classes, runs a studio and has also started a label. “Of course it opens doors if you can say that you have participated in the Eurovision Song Contest three times,” he says. “And I also think it is good advertising, not for my person, but for my songs and only for that. That’s why the political dimension of the festival can sometimes frustrate me. The organization claims to be apolitical, but of course it is not – not even now, when it comes to Israel. I am happy that I can talk about that freely, because I know candidates who cannot do that and would like to do so.”

Mustii doesn’t win

Dumoulin is also heading to Malmö, it will be the fourth time he attends the Eurovision Song Contest. “I was closely involved with Blanche and Eliot’s acts and, among other things, I closely monitored the mixing. Now I go more as a tourist, to see my songwriter friends again. If we reach the final, you will see me waving my Belgian flag in the seat,” he laughs.

After Loreen’s victory last year with the bombastic ‘Tattoo’, Dumoulin thinks that the Eurovision Song Contest will be won this year by someone with humor. “I haven’t heard everything yet, but I think Baby Lasagna from Croatia, Nemo from Switzerland and Joost from the Netherlands have the best chance. Mustii will do well and has a chance of making it into the top ten, but I don’t see him winning.”

Next year it will be up to a Flemish artist again. Does Dumoulin have any advice for us? “I regularly attend sessions of Eurovision participants and my colleagues often look at what scored the year before. Then they want to write a typical ballad or dance track. I try not to do that, and I think that’s an asset. Look for a song that grabs you in ten seconds and in which emotions run high. That can be sadness, anger or surprise, as long as the viewer feels something deep down.”