Following the long-awaited Dutch return to the Eurovision Finals brought to us by Anouk last year, newly-merged national broadcaster AVROTROS decided to keep up the trend of internally selecting a major name.  In this case, they picked two!  Singers Ilse DeLange and Waylon, each individually famous in their own right, will be joining forces under the name The Common Linnets this year in Copenhagen.

Thirty-six-year-old Ilse has released seven highly successful studio albums and a number of live releases, with singles like “Miracle” topping the local charts.  She is currently one of the four judges on “The Voice of Holland”.  Thirty-three-year-old Waylon (born Willem Bijkerk) first came to renown in 2008 after a successful run on the first season of “Holland’s Got Talent”, where he came in second place.  His breakthrough single, “Wicked Way“, cracked into the Dutch Top Ten, and he’s been making local hits ever since.  Together, The Common Linnets will be putting the “country” back in “the Low Countries”, if this sample of their work is any indication:

As a point of trivia, for those of you who were wondering, a Common Linnet (Carduelis cannabina) is a small finch found all over Europe.  Over the years, it’s been mentioned in poetry by Tennyson, Wordsworth, Yeats, and Wilde.

An *actual* Common Linnet

Will these Dutch songbirds go over as popularly as their namesake?  We’ll find out when their song is presented this March.