"Pali się" is a song by Polish band Tulia. A bilingual version with additional English text, titled "Fire of Love (Pali się)", represented Poland in the

Eurovision Song Contest 2019 The Eurovision Song Contest 2019 was the 64th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Tel Aviv, Israel, following the country's victory at the with the song "Toy" by Netta. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union ...

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

. It did not progress to the final.

Eurovision Song Contest

The song was selected to represent Poland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 after Tulia was internally selected by the Polish broadcaster. On 28 January 2019, a special allocation draw was held which placed each country into one of the two semi-finals, as well as which half of the show they would perform in. Poland was placed into the first semi-final, to be held on 14 May 2019, and was scheduled to perform in the first half of the show. Once all the competing songs for the 2019 contest had been released, the running order for the semi-finals was decided by the show's producers rather than through another draw, so that similar songs were not placed next to each other. Poland performed in position 4, and did not qualify for the final. It was later revealed that Poland was placed 11th in the semi-final, receiving 120 points, missing qualification by 2 points. It is also the best-scoring Eurovision song which failed to qualify to the final.

Music video

The team's representatives confirmed that the main inspiration in the making of the music video was the film ''

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

'', directed by

Paweł Pawlikowski Paweł Aleksander Pawlikowski (; born 15 September 1957) is a Polish filmmaker. He garnered early praise for a string of documentaries in the 1990s and for his award-winning feature films of the 2000s, '' Last Resort'' (2000) and '' My Summer of ...

. The video features cameos by Polish actors Jędrzej Tarank, Bartłomiej Firlet and Piotr Miazga from the television series ''

Ojciec Mateusz ''Ojciec Mateusz'' ( English: ''Father Matthew'') is a Polish television drama series, which has aired on TVP1 since November 11, 2008. It is a Polish version of the Italian detective series ''Don Matteo'' broadcast in Italy by Rai Uno. ...

''.

Controversy

The original music video for the song featured a

wayside cross A wayside cross is a cross by a footpath, track or road, at an intersection, along the edge of a field or in a forest. It can be made of wood, stone or metal. Stone crosses may also be conciliation crosses. Often they serve as waymarks for wal ...

, although this cross was later removed in the music video for the song's Eurovision version. Following the realisation that the cross had been removed, allegations of censorship and discrimination against Christians arose. General director of Polish broadcaster

Telewizja Polska Telewizja Polska S.A. (; TVP), also known in English as Polish Television, is a Public broadcasting, public service broadcaster in Poland, founded in 1952. It is the oldest and largest Polish television network. After 2015, when the right-wing po ...

(TVP) Jacek Kurski called for the record company

Universal Music Polska Universal Music Polska Sp. z o.o. (Universal Music Poland) is a Polish subsidiary of Universal Music Group, it was founded in 1998 in Warsaw. Labels CEO is Maciej Kutak after Jan Kubicki's departure. Label was founded after PolyGram, within its Po ...

to restore the original version of the music video. The two videos are nearly identical, apart from the erasure of the cross in the Eurovision version. Tulia's management stated in an interview that the cross was removed due to

European Broadcasting Union The European Broadcasting Union (EBU; , UER) is an alliance of Public broadcasting, public service media organisations in countries within the European Broadcasting Area (EBA) or who are member states of the Council of Europe, members of the ...

(EBU) restrictions on the promotion of political institutions; they also added that they themselves were not responsible for the editing of the video. However, a figure of

John of Nepomuk John of Nepomuk (or John Nepomucene) (; ; ) ( 1345 – 20 March 1393) was a saint of Bohemia (a western part of what is now the Czech Republic) who was drowned in the Vltava river at the behest of King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia. Later accounts st ...

is still visible in the background of the Eurovision version music video.

Track listing

References

2019 songs 2019 singles Eurovision songs of Poland Eurovision songs of 2019 Television controversies in Poland Music video controversies Christianity-related mass media and entertainment controversies {{2019-single-stub