On Saturday, 27-year-old Dara made history for Bulgaria by becoming the country’s first Eurovision champion. While the competition may have been shrouded in controversy, Dara earned one of the highest scores in recent years (a whopping 516 points) with her club banger Bangaranga.
Dara’s future as a pop sensation looks promising, having reached the final of the Bulgarian edition of The X Factor in 2015 and since amassing 502,600 TikTok followers. To mark the occasion, The Observer looks back at previous Eurovision winners and those who just missed out on stardom.
Up first is the UK’s only real Eurovision success in recent years, Sam Ryder. The 2022 entry Space Man missed out on first place, instead coming second, but the long-haired singer became a household figure and the first Eurovision act to be nominated for Best New Artist at the Brit awards. Ryder has followed this up with his album There Is Nothing but Space, Man!, which features the very teen rom-com-friendly track More.
Måneskin are the Italian rock quartet who won the 2021 Eurovision song contest with Zitti e buoni (“Quiet and Well-Behaved”). But their real success came later that summer when they went viral on Spotify and TikTok with I Wanna Be Your Slave. The track earned the group their first UK Top 5 single, and they later released a duet version featuring Iggy Pop.
Now for a star whose humble Eurovision beginnings may only just be coming back to you … yes, Céline Dion represented Switzerland in 1988 with Ne partez pas sans moi, or Don’t Leave Without Me. Dion famously won the competition by beating the UK’s entry by a single point. Since then, she has become one of the most decorated and celebrated artists in music history, with five Grammy awards, 20 Juno awards, nine Billboard Music awards, 50 Félix awards, and, of course, a Eurovision win.
Eurovision 1974 is memorable for many reasons, specifically Abba, who went on to take the world by storm in their silver platform go-go boots. Many forget that a 25-year-old Olivia Newton-John also competed that year, representing the UK with Long Live Love. Famously, Newton-John disliked both the song and her light blue, floor-length Sandra Dee-style dress. The performance prefigured her iconic role in Grease, which came out four years later.
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Which brings us to the act most synonymous with Eurovision history: Abba. The group won the 1974 contest, representing Sweden with their iconic Waterloo. Since then, Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad have become one of the most renowned and commercially successful musical groups ever. So, the winner really does take it all.
Illustration by Charlotte Durance