Loreen of Sweden winner of the Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final in Liverpool is the first woman to win twice. Photo / Martin Meissner, AP
Loreen of Sweden winner of the Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final in Liverpool is the first woman to win twice. Photo / Martin Meissner, AP
Loreen has made Eurovision history, lying down. As only the second person in the competition’s 67-year history to win twice, the singer from Sweden joins the country’s pantheon of pop stars - including Abba, who won Eurovision in 1974 with Waterloo.
Lorine Zineb Nora Talhaoui, known by her stage name Loreen, took home the Eurovision title this weekend, scoring an impressive 583 points. This was an improvement on the 372 points she scored for Euphoria in 2012, which won her the title the first time in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Performing for the majority of her three-minute song Tattoo lying down under a large slab, it was a show that wowed the jury and public votes that crowned her winner of the competition in Liverpool.
The competition was one for the books. There were surrealistic Croatian Y-fronts and more box-smashing from Finland’s entry than a weekend in Waiohika.
It was also the first time the competition was hosted on behalf of another country. 2022 winners Ukraine were unable to host this year due to the war, so it was held by runners-up the UK. Sam Ryder, the UK entrant from last year, and Ukrainian champions Kalush Orchestra were both part of the awards ceremony on Saturday night.
Viewers in Perth and Western Australia who stayed up until 3am to watch the contest were rewarded with a top 10 finish, the best result since they were first united to compete in 2015.
Australia came fifth with Guy Sebastian after an eight-year deal with SBS and the European Broadcasting Union marking the 60th anniversary of the competition. As the last year of the deal, which expires in 2023, it remains to see if the WA rockers Voyager did enough to keep Australia in the competition.
Runner up Jere Poyhonen AKA Kaarija of Finland performs at the Eurovision Song Contest 2023. Photo / Martin Meissner, AP
Could New Zealand enter Eurovision?
Comedy duo Two Hearts had a go at their own unofficial entry for Aotearoa, in the form of a Euro-trash ballad appealing for New Zealand to be allowed to compete.
Vocalist Joseph Moore told RNZ they were only half joking.
“They broke the rules for Australians, why can’t they do it for us?”
Theie song is called Eurovusion.
Earlier this year the EU’s ambassador to New Zealand Nina Obermaier, invited Kiwis to consider a formal entry.
“It’s a very exciting event. It’s watched by 200 million people worldwide. It’s a celebration of diversity and music and culture, and New Zealand should be a part of it,” she told Radio New Zealand.
Australia isn’t the only geographical outlier to have taken part. The north African kingdom of Morocco competed in the 1980 contest, entering the song “Bitaqat Hub” by Samira Bensaïd. While the boundaries may be loose, no country from outside Europe has ever won the competition. This is probably for the best, as there is a tradition that the winning country hosts the competition the following year.
Sadly there was no risk of Eurovision heading ‘Down Under’ as the EBU stated that, in the event of an Aussie act winning, Australia would have to nominate a European country to co-host the competition for them.
The Australian delegates would, however, have the opportunity to plan the event and supporting acts, as Ukraine did with co-hosts UK in Liverpool this year.
Are Voyager set to be Australia's last Eurovision entry? Photo / Corinne Cumming, EBU; Supplied
Which country has won Eurovision the most times?
Loreen’s victory places Sweden as the joint most successful country ever to compete. Tattoo is Sweden’s seventh Eurovision Song Contest title.
Ireland, however, still ties the record with an impressive seven victories. Luxembourg, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom are hot on their heels, as five-time winners.
Germany’s “Blood and Glitter” landed at the bottom of the table with just 18 points.
Viewers wearing Sam Ryder masks in the Fan Zone outside the Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool. Photo / Jon Super, AP
However, they were not the worst recorded entry. There have been 41 countries that have been awarded the dreaded “nul point” or a zero score, 37 of them failing to get a single point in the Grand Final.
Norway and Austria have the worst record for Eurovision, having each fielded four acts which achieved “nul points”.
Norway’s Jahn Teigen supposedly delivered the worst Eurovision performance of all time with Mil Etter Mil in 1978. The first artist to be awarded “nul points” under the scoring system, it was a badge Teigen wore with pride until his death in 2020.
With a Guinness World Record as the longest-running song competition of all time, the sum of all contestants’ three-minute performances would add up to over 72 hours’ worth of recorded music since the competition began in 1956 on the banks of Lake Lugano, Switzerland.
