Azerbaijan participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 with the song "Always" written by Arash Labaf, Robert Uhlmann, Marcus Englöf, Johan Bejerholm, Alex Papaconstantinou, Anderz Wrethov and Elin Wrethov. The song was performed by AySel and Arash, which were internally selected by the Azerbaijani broadcaster İctimai Television (İTV) to represent the nation at the 2009 contest in Moscow, Russia. AySel and Arash's selection as the Azerbaijani Eurovision entrants were announced separately on 17 January and 12 February 2009, respectively, while the song "Always" was presented to the public on 3 March 2009.
Azerbaijan was drawn to compete in the second semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest which took place on 14 May 2009. Performing during the show in position 12, "Always" was announced among the 10 qualifying entries of the second semi-final and therefore qualified to compete in the final on 16 May. It was later revealed that Azerbaijan placed second out of the 19 participating countries in the semi-final with 180 points. In the final, Azerbaijan performed in position 11 and placed third out of the 25 participating countries, scoring 207 points.
Background
Prior to the 2009 contest, Azerbaijan had participated in the Eurovision Song Contest one time since its first entry in when the song "Day After Day" performed by Elnur and Samir placed eighth. The Azerbaijani national broadcaster, İctimai Television (İTV), broadcasts the event within Azerbaijan and organises the selection process for the nation's entry. İTV confirmed their intentions to participate at the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest on 2 November 2008. In 2008, Azerbaijan organized a national final titled Land of Fire, which resulted in the selection of a winning performer that would subsequently be given an internally selected song to perform at Eurovision. In 2009, the broadcaster had initially planned to organise the Land of Fire national final, however, plans to stage the show were later abandoned in favour of internally selecting both the artist and song that would represent Azerbaijan due to a lack of quality of the participants.
Before Eurovision
Internal selection
Both the artist and song that represented Azerbaijan at the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 was selected internally by İTV. On 16 January 2009, the broadcaster called for interested songwriters to submit their entries by 22 January 2009. Songwriters could be of any nationality. On 17 January 2009, İTV announced that Aysel Teymurzadeh would represent Azerbaijan. The selection of AySel as the Azerbaijani Eurovision contestant was based on the decision of İTV and a national jury panel from 40 potential artists that attended a casting round on 24 and 25 October 2008. The members of the jury were Ismail Omarov (General Director of İTV), Ibrahim Guliyev (Executive Director of the Azerbaijani Culture Friends Foundation), Farhad Badalbeyli (Rector of the Baku Academy of Music), Lala Kazimova (President of the National Music Committee of Azerbaijan), Murad Adigozelzade (Director of the Azerbaijan State Academic Philharmonic Hall), Manzar Nuraliyeva (representative of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Azerbaijan) and Farhad Hajiyev (representative of the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Azerbaijan).
On 5 February 2009, İTV announced that AySel would be performing the song "Always". The song was selected from 30 submissions from local and international songwriters in a similar broadcaster and jury method. "Always" was written by Arash Labaf, Robert Uhlmann, Marcus Englöf, Johan Bejerholm, Alex Papaconstantinou, Anderz Wrethov and Elin Wrethov. On 12 February 2009, Arash revealed that he would also be performing at the contest in a duet with AySel. "Always" was presented by Warner Music Sweden on 3 March 2009, while the official music video was later released on 19 March 2009. In regards to the song, AySel stated: "I'm 19 and I can tell you that I was in love. But now I'm waiting for such a strong and engrossing feeling in my life, like that one we are singing about with Arash in our song. I cant wait to find that special someone that only one whom will spell my name and all the mountains are high!"