London
Cnn
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Austria won its third song competition in Eurovision after a scintillating grand final in neighboring Switzerland, singer JJ winning the votes of the continent for the pop anthem of the opera “Wasted Love”.
The song, which highlights the remarkable voice of the singer Austria-Filipino formed classic and was staged in a dramatic style which mentioned a sinking, dazzled the crowd in Basel and saw Austria triumph for the first time since the victory of Conchita Wurst in 2014.
Israel arrived second in the ranking, with Yuval Raphael – a survivor of the October 7 attacks of Hamas – the winning support for his performance as “New Day Will Rise”. Estonia was ranked third, while San Marino obtained the last place.
Before the final, JJ told CNN: “I feel very, very humiliated and honored that the work of art I put there is so well accepted. It is the kind of music that I want to continue to make.”
“I had a fairly difficult year, and I wanted to write about my personal experience with a wasted love and not a societary,” he said, adding that if he won the final on Saturday, he “probably was decomposed, began to cry and then call my family”.
The great final of Eurovision is a decisive event on the LGBTQ + calendar and arouses interest through the continent, presenting some of the most talented, eccentric and varied artists in Europe.
On Saturday, there was a six Latvian ethno-pop rooms, whose bewitching track merged a folk song with fairy tale imagery; A Ukrainian group inspired by glamorous rock; An Estonian artist Gimmicky who caricatured the cultivation of Italian coffee; And a double Albanian act whose obsessive song “Zjerm” has become a favorite of fans.
A rumor appearance of Celine Dion, who won Eurovision for Switzerland in 1988 and who, with Abba, is the more famous former competitions, has failed to materialize.
Although the organizers insist that Eurovision is an apolitical event, the competition has long been involved in the tensions of the continent. Russia and Bélarus were prohibited after the invasion of Ukraine by Moscow, and the participation of Israel has opposed by fans’ base segments because of the country’s war in Gaza.
The Israeli competitor Raphael – who attended the Nova music festival when Hamas launched its cross -border attacks in October 2023 – sang in an arena where Palestinian flags were flying, following a change in rule of the European Union of Broadcasting (EBU).
At the end of his performance on Saturday, a man and a woman tried to storm the scene, according to the EBU. “One of the two agitators has launched painting, and a crew member was hit. The crew member is good and no one was injured,” EBU said in a statement.
