On Wednesday, December 21st, Belorussian broadcaster BTRC will hold the first public portion of their National Final, where a list of fifteen names will be whittled down into a Top Five.  Those top contenders (selected by a jury and televote) are scheduled to duke it out sometime in January.

The fifteen candidates (in their scheduled running order) are:

1) Anna Blagova – “You”

2) German – “Keep Faith”

3) Aura – “Hands Up!”

4) Alexandra Gaiduk & Natalia Baldina – “Loveless”

5) Gunesh – “And Morning Will Come”

6) Anastasiya Vinnikova – “Shining in Twilight”

7) The Champions – “It’s Your Time”

8 ) Yan Zhenchek & Outerplain – “Point of No Return”

9) Ekivoki – “Number One”

10) Victoria Aleshko – “Dream”

11) Alena Lanskaya – “All My Life”

12) Uzari – “The Winner”

13) Nuteki – “Superheroes”

14) LiteSound – “We Are the Heroes”

15) Thriller – “Message to the World”

Not all of the songs have been released in full, but a video containing clips of some of these entrants (and a few non-qualifiers from the preliminary rounds) has been released on YouTube.  Some of these names are already familiar to Eurovision fans: Anastasiya represented her homeland in Düsseldorf, and Uzari was one of her backing singers (specifically, the one with the curly hair).

Gunesh Abbasova, who has familial roots in Azerbaijan, has tried to represent Belarus in the past, most notably coming in second place in 2009’s National Selection with the unforgettable “Fantastic Girl”:

Coming in third that same year was LiteSound, who paired up with soloist Dakota for their mid-tempo rocker “Carry On”:

As seen in the last two years, Belarus’s selection process can be more than a little flexible, and nothing is truly set in stone until BTRC and the EBU put their stamp on it during the Delegation Meetings (generally held in mid-March).  In 2010, group “3+2” was scheduled to sing the uptempo “Far Away” in Oslo, only to have it inexplicably switched to the ballad “Butterflies” right before the EBU’s deadline.  The following year, Anastasiya Vinnikova was originally supposed to perform “Born in Belorussia“, before it was discovered to have violated the EBU’s rule on being performed before the September 1st, 2010 threshold.  After an attempt to simply re-write the lyrics into “I am Belorussian” (a strategy which the EBU still vetoed), Vinnikova and her writing team gave the world the gift of “I Love Belarus”.  The nation has yet to break into the Top Five at Eurovision, and has only made it into the Top Ten once: with Koldun’s “Work Your Magic” back in 2007.  Let’s see what BTRC serves up for 2012…