Loreen made history at the song contest

“Who knows, maybe I’ll come back a third time,” Loreen joked, visibly relaxed, at the press conference after the Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool. With a perfect stage show, the 39-year-old had achieved on Saturday night what no woman had done before: she won the world’s biggest music show for the second time. Previously, Johnny Logan was the only artist to win it twice (1980 and 1987). In 1992 he won again as a composer.

Loreen has been a betting agency favorite for months with her song, which reminded many of her winning song “Euphoria” from 2012 in Baku. In the final she won mainly thanks to the 37 country juries. The audience favorite was someone else: The Finnish rapper Käärijä won the televoting with a happy sound, green puff sleeves and an exalted appearance, but received significantly fewer jury points – and ended up in second place. Bronze in the singing competition was won by Noa Kirel from Israel, who was not stingy with her charms during the performance. With a drama ballad, Marco Mengoni once again achieved a top position for Italy with fourth place.

Austria’s duo Teya and Salena, with their catchy song “Who the Hell Is Edgar?”, with which they took second place in the semifinals, was considered a candidate good for a surprise. These hopes were not fulfilled. The two women from Vienna took eighth place after the jury’s decision, but fell to 15th place overall after the public vote, in which they only received 16 points. However, there were only nine points between tenth and 15th place. With a bit of luck there would have been more inside.

Stand out at all costs

Nevertheless, the two were happy after the show: “Our dream of reaching the final has come true,” said Teya. Placement isn’t that important to them. The Austrians received a lot of praise for their performance. The renowned FAZ wrote on Friday: “Austria was the best in the second semi-final.” The text of her song, which she wrote with co-authors and criticizes the music industry, was awarded as the best text of the entire competition.

For many of the contributions, the motto was “to attract attention at all costs”, whether through eye-catching staging, as a cabaret (e.g. Croatia’s band Let 3) or politically (e.g. Czech women’s sextet Vesna). Great Britain, acting as host country for Russia-attacked Ukraine, organized a spectacular show that was watched by 1.1 million people on ORF. The British also proved to be the perfect hosts when it came to the result: penultimate place ahead of Germany.

3 questions for… Teya and Salena

The Austrians took 15th place among 26 participants in the final of the song contest.

1. Congratulations on 15th place! What outweighs – joy or disappointment?

Salena: It was an experience that we will never have again. We are satisfied, had a lot of fun and achieved our goal of reaching the final. So everything is easy!

Teya: Our dream has come true, nothing else matters.

2. According to the jury voting, you were in eighth place. Did you expect that?

Teya: No, we thought our song was more of a crowd song than a jury song. We are incredibly grateful for eighth place. We think rank 15 is super good.

3. How will you remember the song contest?

Salena: It was wonderful. I would do it again in a heartbeat because we experienced so much love and met so many new people.