Cyprus and Australia have secured their spots in the Eurovision Song Contest grand final, taking place on May 13 in Liverpool, UK; however, Greece unfortunately did not make it this year.
Cyprus entrant Andrew Lambrou's performance of "Break a Broken Heart" impressed the audience with his powerful vocals and simplistic staging, while Australian band Voyager wowed with their offering, "Promise."
Sadly, Greek artist Victor Vernicos, aged just 16, did not manage to make it through to the final with his song, "What They Say." Since 2004, Greece has only failed to qualify twice for the semi-finals.
A total of 26 countries will compete in the grand final, including Ukraine, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Norway, Serbia, Portugal, Croatia, Switzerland, Israel, Moldova, Sweden, Czechia, Finland, Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Belgium, Austria, Lithuania, Poland, Australia, Armenia, and Slovenia.
Andrew Lambrou is a 24-year-old singer songwriter from Sydney with a Greek Cypriot family background.
At just five-years-old, Andrew learned to play piano at AMS music school. He continually entered vocal competitions where his passion for singing blossomed. When he was five-years-old, he won the AMS vocal Eisteddfod singing ‘Doh A Deer’. He went on to take music lessons at the LaVoce school of singing, being assisted by his vocal coach Marc Villagra.
His parents would go on to help him share videos onto his social media. He would upload new videos weekly until he suddenly accumulated over 2000 followers in one night. A 15 second Instagram post where he covered Sam Smith’s ‘Stay With Me’ ended up being shared on a music site in Spain. This inspired the young singer to continue sharing his covers and realise his potential to reach people with his music.
At 17-years-old he auditioned for ‘X Factor Australia’ in 2015 where he sung a cover of Nick Jonas’ ‘Chains’. The judging panel included Dannii Minogue, James Blunt, Chris Isaac and Australia’s first Eurovision representative Guy Sebastian.
Andrew smashed his audition, and became one of the 20 successful acts making it into the super home visit stage. As part of the “Boys” category with Chris Isaak as his mentor, Andrew got the opportunity to sing in London for Chris and his guest mentors Simon Cowell and Rita Ora. Unfortunately, Andrew was eliminated during this round.
He grew to fame through consistent posting of pop song covers on YouTube, covering songs like ‘Havana’ by Camila Cabello and ‘Dusk Till Dawn’ by Zayn featuring Sia, the latter which has accumulated over 2.3 million views!
The young artist reached a milestone in his career when he signed with Sydney-based label City Pop Records.
About the song
‘Break a Broken Heart’ is written by Thomas Stengaard, Jimmy “Joker” Thörnfeldt, Jimmy Jansson and Marcus Winther-John all of whom have written Eurovision entries in the past.
It is a song about relationships that end with a broken heart but in the end they might very well push us to rise again from the ashes, even stronger.
In an interview with Aussievision, Andrew revealed the meaning behind 'Break a Broken Heart':
“The song is about going through hardships in the past, relationships wise. You know coming back stronger… powering through it.
“Coming through stronger at the end. I think you can apply that to anything in life. You will face hard times and hardships. But you can always bounce back and come through stronger.”