In these weeks between the selection season and Eurovision itself, in Basel, artists and delegations have been touring Europe through pre-parties and other occasions to showcase their entries, trying to get closer to victory. In two days, rehearsals will start, and in less than three weeks, a new winner will be crowned. But what is the road to Eurovision victory? As we wait for the first open rehearsals, we at ESCXTRA look back at the last eight winners of the contest, and at their own road to victory. This week, we are almost finished, with the 2023 champion: Sweden’s very own Loreen, and her song “Tattoo”.
Don’t forget to check our previous articles from this series:
- 2016 – From tragedy to trophy
- 2017 – Keeping up with the Sobrals
- 2018 – Toying with fire
- 2019 – Small-town boy on a big stage
- 2021 – Loud and naughty
- 2022 – By broken roads, triumph
Genesis of a song: A Eurovision legend coming back
Loreen’s Eurovision legend
Before the 2023 contest, Lorine Zineb Nora Talhaoui, known on stage as Loreen, was already a Eurovision legend. Her 2012 victorious song, “Euphoria”, had achieved mainstream success while remaining largely associated with the contest. Her victory was clear, and brought Sweden their first trophy of the 21st century. It was also, for Swedish broadcaster SVT, the confirmation that their new formula for their national selection, Melodifestivalen, was working, a formula that has been repeated until now.
The song had also found an incredible success with fans: from 2012 to 2021, Loreen single-handedly won every single edition of the ESC250 new year’s eve ranking, only to be dethroned in 2022 by Chanel’s “Slomo”, from that year’s contest.
Having lost the throne, it was only natural that Loreen would come back to claim it again. But the road from being a Melodifestivalen participant to winning the contest had not always been a clear one for Loreen.
In 2011, she took part in the selection for the first time, seven years after her participation in Idol 2004. Melodifestivalen had just been revamped after the non-qualification of Anna Bergendahl in Oslo 2010: on the outside, it looked similar, with several shows in several citites, and a mix of juries and televotes choosing the winner. But behind the scenes, much had been changed by Christer Björkman, at the helm of the festival since 2022. SVT was given more leeway to select participants (before that, most of them were chosen by a selection panel), foreign songwriters were allowed in, and the voting was changed to create a proportional system for the televote (replacing the fixed-points system that always gave the televote winner 132 points).
For her Melfest debut, Loreen sent the song “My Heart Is Refusing Me”, cowritten by her, Björn Djupström (who would later write “La La Love” for Cyprus) and Moh Denebi. Despite a catchy tune, the song only reached the fourth position in its Heat, and went to the Andra chansen (Second Chance) show. There, it was put in a duel against Sara Varga’s “Spring för Livet”, a much calmer song with some guitar being played (a detail of some importance…), which got 12,000 more votes than Loreen, ending her 2011 journey.
In 2012, Loreen came back with “Euphoria”, a song written by Thomas G:son and Peter Boström. Both were already Melfest veteran writers, with G:son having written winning Melfest songs with “Lyssna till ditt hjärta” (aka “Listen To Your Heartbeat”) in 2001 and “Evighet” (aka “Invincible”) in 2006, as well as other Eurovision entries for foreign countries (including “In A Moment Like This” from Denmark in 2010).
Boström was also part of the team behind “Manboy” from Eric Saade in Melodifestivalen 2010, and behind Danny Saucedo’s 2011 and 2012 entries, “In the Club” and “Amazing”. The latter was tipped as a favourite behind the scenes in the run-up to the Melfest shows, until “Euphoria” arrived and stole the show, easily qualifying to the final, then winning both the jury and the public vote in Stockholm, and later in Baku. With the highest honour achieved, she could just rest on her laurels. But at some point, she decided to try again. In 2017.
The 2017 attempt
In late 2016, Loreen was announced as part of the line-up of Melodifestivalen 2017. Five years after her victory, the move was met with enthusiasm by some fans and doubts by others, who saw it as a way to relaunch her career after lukewarm responses to her latest songs. This time, her entry “Statements” was cowritten with The family, aka Anton Hård af Segerstad, Joy Deb and Linnea Deb, the team behind the 2015 Swedish winner, “Heroes”.
The joining of forces between the two most recent Swedish champions should have been a done deal, and Malmö 2018 was a likely scenarios for fan in the early 2017 season. However, despite a good success in the charts, “Statements” did not work.
In hindsight, “Statements” was probably too close to Loreen’s more artistical side to truly work in a show like Melodifestivalen. It was a song about the useless empty statements in darker political situations (months after Donald Trump’s first election), calling for more action. The staging was full of political symbolisms, including a reference to Kvinnan med handväskan, or “The woman with the handbag” (which you can see at the 2m03 mark), a press picture taken in an 1985 neo-nazi rally in Vaxjö, Sweden, in which a woman identified as Danuta Danielsson hit a neo-nazi with her handbag.
Just like in 2011, Loreen failed to make it directly to the final, and had to win a duel in Andra Chansen in order to get there. Once again, she failed to do so, losing to another ballad with a guitar melody, “Kiss You Goodbye” by Anton Hagman. In the final, Hagman finished 10th out of 12.
A 2023 comeback
After her failed 2017 attempt, Loreen was not particularly keen on returning to the contest. She was very clear about one fact: she needed a reason to come back. She needed a purpose, something to share, something to say.
It started with the song… It was just an embryo at the time, but I could sense that there was something with this song and me that was going to happen.
Loreen, speaking to NME about her return to Eurovision and Melodifestivalen
My initial reaction [to re-entering Melodifestivalen] was ‘No’ because I’m purpose-driven. I have to understand why I do things: ‘Why stand on that stage?’, ‘Do I have anything to say?’ But whenever I said, ‘Maybe I’ll do it’, there was this feeling of positivity in me. The process felt very easy and effortless.”
That embryo of a song would later become “Tattoo”. After the Family, Loreen came back to the team behind Euphoria, Thomas G:son and Peter Boström, with the addition of Cazzi Opeia, Jimmy Joker, Jimmy Jansson and herself. This was a classic kind of “all-stars” line-up of Melfest composers, each of them having been behind several entries in each edition, more often than not in collaboration with one or several of the others. Originally though, according to Loreen, the song was not written with Eurovision in mind, and she first refused to participate again. Until she accepted.
Yet, by looking at its writing credits “Tattoo” was, in a way, the ultimate achievement of this particular brand of Melodifestivalen, taking its roots in the early 2000’s and boosted by the changes brought by the 2010 non-qualification. Understanding this is key to understanding why, this year, the victory of “Bara Bada Bastu” over “Revolution” (the latter being another level of “ultimate progeny” of that Melfest brand) has provoked so much enthusiasm in the fandom and in Sweden itself.
Musically, but also lyrically, “Tattoo” was a return to a safer, more generic, yet very efficient Swedish electro pop sound for Loreen. While “Statements” was full of political and social references, “Tattoo” was, first and foremost, a love song. It did not just say “I love you”, though. It spoke of the hardships and difficulties one needs to meet to truly appreciate the good in life, and in love.
It’s a love song and I let everybody interpret whatever they want, but what I’m trying to say is that there is no day without night, and there is no love without the opposite either. It’s all necessary.
Loreen about “Tattoo”
We tend to think that the grass is greener on the other side but if you want to experience this deep, authentic love, you have to be aware that the struggle needs to be there too. We can’t run off the moment we feel a little bit of pain.
Earning the ticket: Melodifestivalen glory
Testing the waters in Malmö
Melodifestivalen is a traveling show: each heat takes place in a different arena in Sweden, with the stage being constructed and disassembled for each show. With four participations in the selection, Loreen ended up revealing each of her song in a different city each time.
In 2011, “My Heart is Refusing Me” was the second to perform in the second heat, in Gothenburg’s Scandinavium. In 2012, “Euphoria” close the first heat in Växjö. In 2017, “Statements” also closed the show, the fourth heat this time, but much closer to the Arctic, in Skellefteå.
For 2023, as the favourite before the process had even begun, she was also given the place of honour of closing the fourth heat (which was, at the time, the last heat). This time though, it was at the other side of the country, in Malmö, on February 25.
Going after Axel Schylström, Loreen started her performance lying down between two giant, 4x4m LED screens. The bottom screen was on top of a large, square platform, a reminder of the platform Loreen had used in Baku and on which the entire “Euphoria” performance had taken place.
The music started, and the camera slowly turned on its own axis, challenging the dimensions, giving the performance a videoclip effect. The lights were dim, orange-sand-like. As the song progressed and rose in energy, Loreen sat up, pushed back the top screen, until… a man walked on stage.
Four climate activists attempted to interrupt the performance, knowing full well that “Tattoo” would get the most attention out of every other Melodifestivalen entries. Only one of them, 27-year-old David Alster, managed to reach the stage, holding a banner with the message “Återställ våtmarker” (“Restore wetlands”). He was quickly extracted, but the production crew switched to a large, fixed shot of the arena as the performance continued for a few more seconds. As the top screen above Loreen rose up in the air to let her stand, the music was stopped, and the hosts took over. You can see the moment of the interruption below, and rewind the video to see the full performance until the hosts’ takeover.
The hosts, Jesper Rönndahl and Farah Abadi, reassured the audience in the arena and at home, explaining that the performance could be done again, and that the team was ready for such an event. After a few minutes, Loreen was back between her screens, and gave the first, full performance of her future winning song.
She easily earned the most votes in the first round of the heat, which qualified her directly to the final. Later, Dominik from our team interviewed her backstage, and mentioned the incident. She revealed that she first thought Alster was a technician, and that there was a technical issue. She ended up realising that he was not, but she “didn’t feel any hostile energy whatsoever.”
Stockholm triumph
Two weeks later, she was back in Stockholm for the Final, this time at Friends Arena (in 2012, it was at the Globen, now known as the Avicii Arena). During that gap of time, “Tattoo” was released commercially, along with all the other finalists, and immediately topped the Swedish chart.
Performing in tenth position, Loreen only needed to perform once this time: no activist, no interruption. Twenty minutes later, the announcement of the international juries’ votes started. The scale used for each jury was identical to the 1-to-8-10-12p system used in Eurovision. And to everyone’s surprise, “Tattoo” only received 8 points from the first jury to be announced, Croatia.
Had we all been wrong? Was Loreen not going to get the jury landslide everyone expected? Actually, no, she topped the rest of the juries, earning 12 points from each of them, posting 92 points in the end. This was just below the unbeatable record John Lundvik had set in 2019, when he had received 12 points from every juror, with 96 points in total. Although scores are not comparable face-to-face before that (because more jury points were distributed before 2019), Loreen was still arguably the second-best in the number of potential “12 points” received since the introduction of international jurors in 2010. Nobody (except Lundvik) had received 12 points from all but one jury, not even herself in 2012.
The voting lines remained open for a few minutes after these announcements, and closed during an interval act by Danny Saucedo, as he was inducted into the Melodifestivalen Hall of Fame that year.
Then came the televote: just as in Eurovision, points were announced in the order of the jury ranking, meaning “Släpp Alla Sorger” went first, and “Tattoo” would go last. Since 2019, these votes have been collected through the filter of age groups on the Melodifestivalen app (with the classic, out-of-app televote counted as a separate group), each giving their points through the Eurovision scale. During the show, however, only the total number of points received by each entry was revealed.
The entries were called, one after the other, and moved up the scoreboard. Until there was only one left. “Air” by Marcus & Martinus had received 67 points, putting it on top with 138 points. Loreen needed only 47 points to win. She received 85.
As it turns out, her televote scores followed a pattern similar to her jury scores: 12 points from every group, save one. The little children of Sweden, the age-group for people between the ages of 3 and 9, had given their 12 points to Theoz and “Mer av dig”, just like the Croatian jury. Loreen, this time, only received 1 point, sitting at the edge of their top 10.
This was also the third-best record in that system, equal on points with 2019’s “Too Late For Love” (but with more top marks from Loreen), but behind the unbeatable sweep of Tusse in 2021, when his “Voices” earned 12 points from every group (96 points), and behind the unlucky Anders Bagge, who had received 90 points in 2022 (with top marks from all but two groups), which had not been enough to win.
Loreen, however, did beat one record: the highest number of actual votes, with 3,783,148 votes counted in total, which was more than 300,000 more votes than Bagge the year before. That score was only topped this year by “Bara Bada Bastu”.
The new Sweden representative received her trophy, and walked to the stage where her giant prop was getting ready. Members of the staff created smoke around her, she lied down as the top screen descended upon her, and she was ready to perform again, for her second Melodifestivalen winner’s reprise.
But as Loreen entered the class of 2023 Eurovision participants, a rival was already waiting for her. A green man from Finland, ready to take the Eurovision fan community by storm.
This article continues on the next page.
