This time the Grand Prix will be loud and a bit dark: Germany is sending the rock band Lord Of The Lost to the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) 2023. The Hamburg group, who performed with blood-red outfits, lots of make-up and even more decibels, won the night the ESC preliminary round in Cologne on Saturday.
The band owed their ticket to the ESC final, which will be held in Great Britain on May 13, primarily to the audience. At the end of the ARD show “Unser Lied für Liverpool”, it catapulted the rockers past all other applicants to first place. Audience and jury votes each accounted for 50 percent.
The band performs with the song “Blood
Bands from a similar spectrum have sometimes done well at the ESC – for example, Lordi from Finland (2006) or Måneskin from Italy (2021) won.
More glamour
For Germany – the country that once sent Mary Roos or Katja Ebstein and often something from Ralph Siegel – it’s an unusual choice. In recent years, the Federal Republic has mostly sent smooth pop numbers to the ESC. However, with devastating consequences: Since 2015, last or penultimate places have rained down. The only exception in 2018 was the musician Michael Schulte, who took fourth place.
Lord Of The Lost singer Harms announced that the stage show would “of course go one step further”. “Our designer is very pregnant right now. I don’t know if she can still sew for us. But I would like to make it even bigger, even more glamorous,” he said. Nevertheless: It will remain a “rock show” – without dancers or elaborate choreography. A red pyro rain, for example, would be great, said Harms.
The venue for the ESC final this year is Liverpool. Great Britain will step in as ESC host country in 2023 for Russia-attacked Ukraine, which won the competition in Turin in 2022.
Grand Prix commentator is confident
Long-time Grand Prix commentator Peter Urban believes, in his own words, that Lord Of The Lost will do well. “This glam performance should secure Germany a solid place in Liverpool,” he said at the request of the German Press Agency (dpa).
The singer-songwriter Will Church and the party singer Ikke Hipgold could be regarded as narrowly unsuccessful in the German preliminary round. Church was still way ahead in the jury’s vote, but then couldn’t get enough votes from the audience.
It was completely the opposite with Hipgold, whose attempt to bring the German Ballermann sound to the whole of Europe was observed with a mixture of excitement and astonishment. The singer, who is called Matthias Distel in real life and was also responsible as a producer for the controversial summer hit “Layla” (“She is more beautiful, younger, horny”), was mercilessly accepted by the jury for his song “Lied mitgutes Text”. penalized for last place. The crowd, on the other hand, promoted him to second position in the end, only beaten by Lord Of The Lost.
Hip gold was then quite combative. “I’ll write the next song again next week. You don’t think you’ll get rid of me here,” he told the dpa. “But I’m thinking about doing it with Ralph Siegel next time.” The Grand Prix doyen (winner in 1982 with Nicole and “A little peace”) told the dpa: “That’s a funny idea. I like Matthias very much, and ideas should be allowed to mature.”
