Portugal’s national broadcaster Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP) has once again dipped into the Voice Kids Portugal contestant well to select their entrant for Junior Eurovision 2022, with 13-year-old runner-up Nicolas Alves being picked.
The Voice Kids Portugal winner Maria Gil was unfortunately ineligible to enter the contest on December 11, 2022, in Armenia, as she turns 15 in November 2022, one month short of the contest’s age cut-off.
However, the British-born Alves, whose parents are Brazilian and whose family relocated to Torres Vedras when he was 10-years-old, has found his runner-up performance on Portugal’s version of The Voice Kids earning him the nod instead.
Nicolas Alves será o representante Português 🇵🇹 no @EurovisionJr, que acontecerá em Erevan, na Arménia, no próximo mês de dezembro.#JESC2022https://t.co/9gi5vqw234
— RTP1 (@RTP1) August 10, 2022
Alves has been singing since the age of 4, and started attending music school while still in England at age 8. According to RTP, Alves cites Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury as his primary inspirations. His sister is also a singer, and in his spare time Alves plays guitars with his brothers.
Though Portugal have not fared too well at the Junior version of the contest, in 2021 Simão Oliveira earned their best placing in the contest by coming in 11th.
Though “O Rapaz,” his sweet dedication to his fado-loving grandmother only came in 18th with the jurors, Oliveira found an unexpected surge of support online, coming in third with the online vote for a tender ballad that had been written off by the “fandom” before the contest began.
What do #YOU think of Portugal’s selection of Nicolas Alves? Do #YOU think it was a good idea for RTP to use the Voice Kids talent pool again? Let us know in the comments below, on social media, or in our forum.
