ESC Covers once again google translated the post from Norwegian to English.
This is a blog post and only represents the writer Morten Thomassen’s own views.
Before the year ends, I think it might be a good idea to look back at some memorable songs from Austrian ESC history, and this time I’m looking at 2023.
This brings us to the last post in this series and some may have noticed that I “overlooked” two winners. I have no other reason for that than that I like the songs, but they are not my big favorites and therefore they are simply not memorable in my eyes, even though the gods know that the winning song from both 2014 and 2025 has plenty of memorable aspects to it.
No, I’d rather take the song from the year of the man 2023, “Who The Hell Is Edgar” performed by the duo Teya & Salena who finished second in their semi-final, but together with the winner of the same semi-final, Australian Voyager, they took on an ever-so-small Rybak-2018 who is doing very well in the semi-final only to end up quite far down the results list in the final itself.
Alexander Rybak, as is well known, won his semi-final in NRK and someone at NRK has told me that they received a hint about this before the final in Lisbon and they were also sent the ESC handbook, just in case they ended up winning.
Whether ORF, which is the abbreviation for Austrian TV, got something like that in 2023 is unknown, strangely enough, their 2025 winner “only” finished in 5th place in its semi-final, so it is possible that the EBU has stopped hinting to the TV stations that do best in the semi-final that they have done exactly that before the final.
The song itself is a rather fiery pop song with elements of operatic howling and tendencies towards rap, and at times there are also slightly strained vocals that make themselves felt, but in other words, in other words, a fairly typical ESC song that is highlighted by the visual expression they choose to color their song with.
Although the girls only finished 15th in the end, Teya, whose real name is Teodora Spiric, got a huge amount of revenge two years later. She is actually one of the composers of JJ’s winning song “Wasted Love” and can therefore call herself an ESC winner as long as it is actually those who create the songs that actually win this competition.
So we end this series with an ESC winner, albeit with the “wrong” song, and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.
Featured image – Youtube