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Eurovision Contestants Update

It's the Eurovision Song Contest tonight, so time for my annual post! This year it's the 60th anniversary and Australia are entering for the first time. The contest will be held in Vienna, Austria, since Austria's Conchita Wurst won last year with Rise Like a Phoenix. The UK's entry this year is Electro Velvet. I think the song is ok but nothing startling, lol. I hope we do well though.

In past years I've written about the 3 Singers I Discovered Through Eurovision, Eurovision Songs I Like and Eurovision Past and Present This year I thought I'd do a couple of updates on past winners for something different.



Helena Paparizou

Winning Eurovision for Greece in 2005 with the song My Number One really helped to launch the career of Helena (her real name is Elena is, but she's known abroad as Helena).

 Her debut solo album Protereotita (Priority) had been released the year before but after her Eurovision success it was re-released several times, renamed Protereotita: Euro Edition in Greece and My Number One abroad. My Number One was released as a single and was very successful, reaching No 1 in both Greece and Sweden (where Helena was born).

Mambo! was also a hit and is Helena's most successful single so far. It came out in November 2005.

Helena has released 6 other studio albums, in both Greek and English-  Iparhi Logos (2006), The Game of Love (2006), Vrisko To Logo Na Zo (2008), Giro Apo T' Oneiro (2010), Ti Ora Tha Vgoume? (2013) and her latest, One Life which came out in 2014. 

The Game of Life contained English versions of some songs on Iparhi Logos. She has also brought out 3 Greatest Hits- Greatest Hits & More (2011), The Love Collection (2013) and Greatest Hits & Axtento Remixes 2014. Her singles include My Number One, Mambo!, Iparhi Logos, I Kardia Sou Petra and Baby It's Over. Her latest Greek single is Otan Aggeli Klene.

This March, Helena performed at the Eurovision Greek final since it's 10 years since she won. Can't believe it's been that long! See my Eurovision Songs I Like post above for Helena's Eurovision performance. :)

This is Otan Aggeli Klene which was released in February in Greece. There is also an English version called Angel which was released in Sweden in April.



Listen to the English version of Angel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9y1QvlZuBY

For more on Helena visit her official FB page: https://www.facebook.com/helenapaparizouofficial



Alexander Rybak

 Alexander won for Norway in 2009 with the song Fairytale. He is a violinist and pianist as well as a singer. He sang and played the violin during his Eurovision performance. After winning Eurovision he took a break from studying at the Barratt Due Institute of Music to concentrate on his debut album Fairytales. It was released in March 2010 and was a hit across Europe, reaching No 1 in Norway and Russia.

Alexander was born in Belarus and moved to Norway as a child, he's fluent in Norwegian, Russian and English.

In 2011 Alexander resumed his studies at the Barratt Institute and got a Bachelor of Music in executive violin the following year.

See my post above on Eurovision Songs I Like to watch Alexander's Eurovision performance. :)

To date Alexander has released 4 albums (including Fairytales)- No Boundaries (2010), Visa vid vindens ängar (which is Norwegian language and came out in 2011) and Christmas Tales (2012). His singles include Fairytale, Europe's Skies, Oah, Leave Me Alone, Into a Fantasy from the film How to Train Your Dragon 2 and What I Long For.

He has also released a Russian versiion of his single Oah, called Strela Amura, (which according to Wikipedia translates as "Cupid's Arrow") and a Russian version of Leave Me Alone called Dostala.  

Here's the video for Europe's Skies which was the second single from No Boundaries and was released in October 2010.



For more on Alexander visit his site: https://alexanderrybak.com/


I intended to write a post that was a bit longer, but I was busy and then had a dance performance this afternoon, so got a bit behind! Never mind, maybe I can do more updates next year. :)


Eurovision is on BBC1 at 8pm (9pm Central European time).
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