In this week's episode, drag queens, dead writers and more disastrous placings. As we conclude our story so far of Austria at Eurovision. I'm Stephen Perkins and this is Doucepoix. Hello, London. We are ready for your vote. It is Monday, 20th of October, and we are back with the second instalment of our look at Austria's history in the Eurovision Song Contest, which will take us from 1992 all the way up to the present day. But first, let's take a look at the headlines from the last fortnight. Undoubtedly, the bigger story since our last episode has been the EBU's announcement that the vote scheduled for next month regarding Israel's participation in the contest will no longer be taking place, apparently in response to the ceasefire deal that was struck recently between Israel and Hamas. The matter of Israel's participation is not off the table entirely, but has effectively been kicked down the line back to the General Assembly. In December, the EBU released a statement saying, in light of recent developments in the Middle east, the Executive Board agreed there is a clear need to organise an open and personal discussion among its members on the issue of participation in the Eurovision Song Contest 2026. Consequently, the Board decided to put the issue on the agenda of the ordinary Winter General assembly, which will take place in December, rather than convening an extraordinary meeting beforehand. There hasn't been much in the way of additional communication following the EBU's original statement, which has left the situation rather unclear. At present, it's believed that no vote is actually scheduled for the meeting in December, though theoretically the members attending could call for one to take place. My take on it, for what it's worth, it certainly seems like the EBU is looking to buy itself some time and hoping that the political situation will reach a point where nobody is calling for Israel to be excluded from the contest anymore, though I think that's rather wishful thinking on their part. I would say the decision suggests that the chances of Israel competing in 2026 are higher than they were before the vote was cancelled, but realistically, we won't really know much until the General assembly in December. There's been no word from Ireland, Slovenia, Spain or the Netherlands suggesting that they are planning to walk back their decision to boycott the contest if Israel is allowed to compete. So the situation remains a deeply uncomfortable one for the ebu. Either way, it looks like December is going to be a very challenging month for the contest. In lighter news, Melody Festival and stalwart Sanne Nielsen is reportedly throwing her hat into the ring to represent Sweden Again next year. Sanne has previously entered Melody Festivalen seven times before winning it 2014, with Undo going on to represent Sweden at that year's contest in Copenhagen, finishing third and even narrowly scraping a UK top 40 hit off the back of it. Expect more details on Sanna and all the other rumoured participants in the coming months. And finally, Eurovision winning German songwriter Bernd Meinunger has died at the age of 81. He contributed to 19 Eurovision entries over the years, most recently San Marino's 2015 entry Chain of Lights by Anita Simonici and Michel Perniola, although his most successful and famous entry was Nicole's winning song for Germany, I'm Bischen Frieden in 1982. Our condolences here at Douz Pois go out to Bern's family and friends. Ok, it's time to return to our deep dive into the history of Austria at the contest. In our previous episode, we left poor Thomas Wolschner scoring zero points in Rome in 1991. So we're picking up in 92, where broadcaster ORF attempted to course correct with Tony Vegas and Zusamun Gaen or let's Go Together. He'd attempted to represent Austria the year before, but finished as runner up in their national final and has clearly impressed ORF so much that they picked him internally in 1992. The song was apparently one of the pre contest favourites to win, but ended up finishing in 10th place with 63 points. It opens with a pretty nifty cello solo, but other than that it's a pretty standard 1990s Eurovision ballad. I think he does a good job with it and I can see why he was a favourite to win, but I also think he's operating in the same realm as that year's winner Linda Martin's why Me For Ireland. So maybe he just didn't quite match up in the eyes of the juries. Still, Tony clearly had fans remaining at ORF because they decided to keep him on for 1993 as well. Organising a national final called and I swear I'm Not Making this up Veni VD Vegas to select the song for that year, the winning entry was Maria Magdalena, which was a very different vibe from the previous one, a lot more engaging and uptempo. And yes, if you look closely, you can spot our pal Gary Lux again on backing vocals. Sadly, luck wasn't on Tony's side this year either and he finished in 14th place with 32 points. In 1994, Austria sent Petra Frey with Fur den Frieden der Welt or for World Peace, which very much sounds like you'd expect a song with that title to sound, which is to say it's a big, slightly gloopy, synthy ballad. The vocals are a little bit shaky to begin with, but she warms up as the performance goes on. Though the whole thing isn't hugely memorable, and ended up in 17th place with 19 points. 1995's entry, however, was a lot more interesting. Stella Jones with Die Welt Dreit sich Verkehrt, or the World Is Turning Upside down, which is a funky blues number featuring what I'm fairly certain is the final appearance from Gary Looks for Austria, this time on backing vocals and keyboards. Truly the MVP of Austria over these two decades. We salute your commitment to the cause, Gary. While this song was pretty cool, it wasn't really the sort of thing, genre wise, that won Eurovision during the era of Irish ballad domination. Still, a 13th place finish with 67 points was a respectable result. I'll admit I'm not entirely sure what the thinking was with the 1996 entry Weils der gut Gaut or Because It's Good by George Nussbaumer, performed in the dialect of Vararlbergish. This was definitely an odd duck. Quite musical theatre y and chaotic. Trying to be a lot of different things at once and not necessarily doing any of them terribly successfully. It's essentially what the hell just happened 30 years earlier. Somehow this got 10th place with 68 points. So maybe the jury saw something in it that I didn't. But I would argue that perhaps its greatest legacy in the contest is the fact that the backing vocalists are all in black with green shirts, which makes me think this is what Katrina was drawing inspiration from when she was sorting out her outfit for the 1997 contest. And speaking of 1997, that year, Austria's entry was Bettina Soriat with One Step, a song that actually sounds quite contemporary for the 1990s music scene. So I take my hat off to Austria for that. She was one of George Nussbaum's backing vocalists the year before, continuing Austria's grand tradition of the supporting singers going, yeah, that looks fun, I wouldn't mind a go at this myself. There is some actual choreography going on here which is quite exciting and the whole thing is really fun, but it didn't resonate with the juries and finished in 21st place with 12 points. I do wonder if this was maybe slightly ahead of its time and it might have fared slightly better if it had gone the following year after the switch to Televoting because I just think the public might have got this slightly more than the juries did. Of course, by now we were into the relegation era, where there were more countries wanting to compete at Eurovision than there were available spaces in the contest, which meant that countries who didn't maintain a high average score over the previous four years would eventually have to sit out. Which is what happened to Austria in 1998 when their poor finishes in 1994 and 1997 caught up with them and they were relegated. They returned in 1999 with Bobby Singer and Reflection, a sight of Hepburn esque girl pop that was only Austria's second ever entry in English, following the relaxation of the native language rules. Bobby performs the song with a kind of languid ease, but it does suit the vibe of the song and the crowd seemed to be feeling it, as apparently did the televoters, as this got them back to 10th place with 65 points and guaranteed Austria a spot in the following year's contest. The entry in 2000 was the rounder Girls with all to you, which is clearly intended as a kind of 1960s girl group throwback. Very much wanting to be the Supremes or the Brunettes, but something about it doesn't quite gel. It feels quite a nervous performance and as a result the vocals don't really have the kind of heft you need with this genre of music. It's a fun song and you can definitely feel them getting into gear properly as the performance goes on. To the extent that the final third of this actually works really well, but I think that came just a little bit too late to save it. They scored 34 points, finishing in 14th place, and Austria were sadly relegated again in 2001. So in 2002, ORF decided on the tried and tested approach of sending a sexy man who'd already had a hit song recently and picked Manuel Ortega with say a Word. It's a strategy that does make a lot of sense, but I think the song rather let him down here. The chorus is a bit too bland and repetitive and I had to laugh that even the commentator on the clip I watched noted its similarity to Freeze alright now he only scored 26 points and finished 18th. Although the relegation rules had changed slightly at this point to mean that you just had to finish high enough on the table the previous year to automatically qualify the following year. And Austria qualified for the 2003 contest by a margin of just one point. The approach for 2003 couldn't have been more different. Comedian Alf Poier with Weil Der Mentschelt or because the person counts. He sang in the South Bavarian Styrian dialect, and it was an elaborate joke entry in which he performed surrounded by cardboard cutouts with animal heads. He's no singer, let's be honest, and the whole thing reads like an enthusiastic karaoke performance at best. He was predicted to do very badly, but ended up in sixth place with 101 points, and continued to troll the contest afterwards by declaring that his very low placing was a sign that Europeans have no taste. However, Alf doing so well meant that Austria got to completely skip the semi final qualifying round in 2004, the first time that the contest had held a televised one, and advanced directly to the final. A national selection for that year chose Boy Band Tiebreak with Dubist, and they tick off all the tropes of a noughties boy band. One of them's got a shaved eyebrow, another's got purple streaks in his hair, right down to the song, which is very Westlife coded, although if it sounds like like anything in particular, it would probably be because youe Loved Me by Celine Dion. A fun fact about this one is that it's Austria's only entry in standard German since 1997. Since the other German songs since then were all in various dialects, it fared pretty disastrously at the contest, only picking up nine points, five from Greece and four from France, and finished in 21st place as a result. 2005 was the first time Austria needed to qualify from a semi final, unless you count the audio only one from 1996, and their entry this year was definitely a strange1.e assi or and so on by Global Cleaner is best described as drunken English, Spanish bilingual folk music with some added yodeling, and it's every bit as ill advised as that sounds. It might have had a slim chance of succeeding as the comedy entry that year, but any hope of that was pretty much buried when it was selected to perform first in a field of 25 in the semi final, and they only picked up 30 points, finishing in 21st place and not qualifying for the final. At this point, Orf seemed quite miffed with their recent poor results and declined to return in 2006, making noises that the contest wasn't simply about the talent of the individual artists anymore, although quite how they could say that with a straight face after their last three attempts is a mystery to me. They did return in 2007 with Eric Papilaia and Get a Life, Get Alive. Interestingly, this was the official song of the 2007 Lifeball in Vienna supporting HIV and AIDS awareness and they decided to lean into that in the staging by having him emerge from a big red AIDS awareness ribbon. It's undoubtedly a well intentioned effort. I believe all profits from the single went to charity, but but it's maybe a little heavy handed in its messaging and it did not resonate with the voters, finishing 27th in that year's semi final with just four points. It's such a shame to see something that came from such a good place do so poorly, but I can't help thinking that the song itself was the weakest element of the whole package. Their failure to qualify again in 2007 clearly left ORF thinking that they had had the right decision in withdrawing the previous year, so they didn't come back in 2008. In fact, they didn't return to the competition again until 2011 when they sent Nadine Beyler with the Secret Is Love, a young woman with a severe bob doing her Celine Dion impression with a functional but fairly nondescript ballad. I think you could charitably argue that this was Austria aiming straight down the middle of the road with this one, but it paid off. It was their first qualification from a televised semi final and it got them to 18th place in the final with 64 points. 2012 is one of Austria's most notorious entries. The duo Track Shitters with voki mit daimpopo, which is performed in a central Bavarian dialect called Mlvietlerish and means sheikh. The fact that a group called Track Shitters was allowed to compete at Eurovision at all kind of blows my mind, but here we are. This feels like the sort of thing that was aimed squarely at performing really well in the televote, but it was a total miss. They finished last in their semi final with just eight points and only managed to finish second from last in the televote. Honestly, I think we might just have to chalk this one up to one of the many major human rights violations committed at the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest in Baku. 2013 saw a less abrasive attempt with Natalia Kelly's Shine, a rousing ballad that definitely had the potential to be a real crowd pleaser and she is a really good singer, but the whole thing just feels a little bit undercooked, particularly in the staging where she's just sort of left wandering around and generally vibing. It's a shame because I feel there is definitely a world in which this could have qualified for the final if they'd just done something slightly more dynamic with it. But as it was. This was a second consecutive non qualifier for Austria, finishing 14th in its semi final with 27 points. If this wander down memory lane has taught me anything, it's just how unlikely an Austrian victory would have seemed by 2014, given their recent track record of absence and underperforming. But perhaps that underdog narrative only worked in favour of Conchita Verse with Rise Like a Phoenix, it does seem like Austria have learned from their mistakes the previous year. Although Conchita's performance itself is fairly static, the team have done a great job with the lighting and the visual imagery to drive the message of the song home. And Conchita has such magnetic stage presence that the lack of choreo doesn't really matter. She's just serving winner energy from the off. I remember how much they toyed with us in the presentation of this year's contest as well that she was left quite near the end of the qualifying announcements and even the vote reveals in the final came in such a way that she didn't take a clear lead for a while. But in the end she had a fairly comprehensive victory with a tally of 290 points, making this Austria's first win in 48 years, setting a record that still stands for the longest gap between Eurovision wins. It's unlikely to be beaten for a while, at least until France or Spain manages to win again, or if Luxembourg does, but they would need to wait until 2032. So we were in Vienna for the 2015 contest with Austria defending their title. And how did it go? Not so great. They sent the make makes with I Am Yours, a light, bluesy track that's mostly memorable for the staging where the piano catches fire in the middle of it, and for the fact that Austria became the first host country in Eurovision history to score 0 points. However, by a weird quirk, they weren't actually last that year. Because Germany's Black Smoke by Anne Sophie also scored zero points, and because Austria had performed earlier in the running order, tiebreak rules in place for that contest meant that they ranked head of Germany in the final tally. There were a lot of eyes on Storks in 2016 when it was revealed that Austria's entry that year was Luan Dixi, or Far From Here by Zoe, performed entirely in French, which was both not an official language of Austria and not a language that was generally associated with Eurovision's success in that era. However, the secret weapon was Zoe herself, a Disney princess, maid flash with a sweet, charming voice who fully leaned into her aesthetic for the staging and gave the impression that a wonderland was blooming around her as she sang. The juries were unimpressed, awarding her just 31 points, but then she received a whopping 120 points from the public, an 8th place finish in the televote that propelled her to 13th place overall. Attempts to reconstruct Zoe in boy form the following year were less successful. Nathan Trent was a sweet cinnamon role of a human being, but his song running on air wasn't the stealth banger that Luan DC was, giving more of a polite coffee shoppy Jason Mraz kind of vibe. He finished in 16th place with 93 points, zero of which came from the televote. In 2018, Austria were represented by Cesare Sampson with Nobody but yout. An interesting case because he'd originally been chosen for the UK's national selection that year, but withdrew after Austria offered him a guaranteed internal selection. He had previous former Eurovision, having done backing vocals for Bulgarian entrants Polyjanova in 2016 and Christian Kostov in 2017 before finally getting the chance to take centre stage. This song hugely outperformed expectations by finishing top with the juries, but was only 13th in the public vote. But it was still enough to pull off a very impressive third place finish overall with 342 points. And while I don't remember being that taken with this song on the night, it has since made its way into my Eurovision Bangers playlist, so fair play to him. Unfortunately, things went back downhill again for Austria in 2019 with Payenda and Limits, a song that, due to her idiosyncratic phrasing I have always kind of assumed was about shoes. The construction of the song itself, pretty cool. There's kind of an FKA Twigs vibe to the whole thing, but her vocals are quite challenging to listen to in the live performance and this one finished in 17th place in its semi final with 21 points, again with zero of them coming from the televote. Had the 2020 contest not been cancelled, Austria would have been represented by Vincent Bueno with Alive, a funky Bruno Mars style track that I reckon might have done quite well for them. I think it would at least have made it to Saturday night's final. However, Vincent was one of many artists unlucky enough to get invited back for 2021 with a much worse song than he had the previous year. In this case, I remember saying at the time that it is a bad idea to have is this what you wanted as the main refrain of your song? If there is a significant chance of the answer being no, as it was here, finishing 12th in the semi final with 66 points. The Spectre of COVID continued to loom over Austria in 2022 with Lumix and Pia Maria's Halo an absolute banger of a track that was sadly stymied by the fact that Pia had been experiencing vocal problems due to the effects of long Covid. It's a real shame because this song is absolutely slaps and was one of my favourite entries for the entire contest that year and they were both so happy and joy filled at the end of their performance. But ultimately the overall impression just wasn't strong enough to see them through to Saturday and they finished 15th in the semi final with 42 points. In 2023, Austria was represented by the' Aya and Sileena with who the Hell Is Edgar? A song about songwriting and also about being possessed by the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe. It was such a fan favourite to the extent that if you watch the live performance, they're almost drowned out by the crowd singing along. But despite a strong result in the semi final in which they finished second, this was let down by a poor Televote score during the final, with only 16 of its 120 points coming from the public. The generally received wisdom among the fans is that being on first in the running order probably did hurt them, but this was still a much better result than Austria had had for five years and Thea would get her revenge soon enough. 2024's entry for Austria was Killeen and We Will Rave, a take no prisoners banger from a singer who had a long history with Eurovision, albeit largely as a creative director working across both Junior Eurovision and the main contest. In the end, this performance became primarily known for the camera failure that occurred during the dance break, which cut a whole chunk of it out and which has been substituted for a wide shot of the arena when it was uploaded to YouTube. As great a song as it is, this was probably never really destined to be a top 10 finisher and it ended up in 24th place with 24 points. And that brings us to 2025 with Austria's most recent win, Wasted Love by JJ. Co written by Taya. It's a mournful ballad that showcases JJ's incredible soprano voice and then unexpectedly goes very techno in the last 30 seconds. Much like Nemo's the Code, this one just felt like a winner when I first heard it. Although I admit I had my doubts when I saw the staging at the contest, which felt too music video like too busy. But in a year where there was very little consensus between the way the jury were voting and the way that the public was. This one was a rare matter of agreement. Winning the jury vote and finishing fourth with the public for a total of 436 points. Personally, I put the victory down almost entirely to that little grunt of frustration that JJ does when he crushes the little paper boat in the Grand Final performance, which wasn't a thing he did during the semi, and it just absolutely elevates the whole thing. So there we have it. Every single Austrian Eurovision entry from their debut to the present day, what awaits them in 2026? Hopefully a better result than they got the last time they hosted, although they couldn't really do much worse. No doubt we'll be covering that in more detail when we find out more about their next entry. And with over 400 songs reportedly submitted for their national final, hopefully there are some serious contenders in there. That's all for this week's episode. Thank you as always for spending some time with us. 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