Eurovision had it’s grand final in the early hours of Sunday morning and crowned a new winner of the popular song competition. The show aired live on SBS and will be repeated on Sunday evening.
While Australia’s Jessica Mauboy delivered a strong performance, with the crowd singing along to her tune We Got Love, when the votes started rolling in Australia was left well down the tally board.
Israel’s Netta was the winner with her quirky song Toy. The tune which is filled with chicken noises and features dancers with chicken dance moves is a comment on bullying and the #metoo movement.
Israel was the favourite to win heading into the competition, but bookmakers speculated that Cyprus could also be the winner.
Nettas Barzilai is the fourth singer to win the competition for Israel. Transgender singer Dana International won the competition in 1998 and Israel previously won back to back competitions in 1978 and 1979.
Australia’s entry from Jessica Mauboy was in 12th place when the votes from the jury voting were tallied but did not score well in the tele-vote section and was dragged down to 20th place in the 26 spot competition.
It’s Australia’s worst result since joining the competition in 2015. Guy Sebastian finished fifth in 2015, Dami Im got to second place in 2016 and last year Isaiah Firebrace took out the ninth position in the competition.
During the broadcast British Singer SuRie’s performance was interrupted when an audience member rushed the stage and grabbed her microphone.
The man was taken in police custody, organisers quickly released a statement saying SuRie had been offered the opportunity to perform a second time but she had declined and said she was proud of the performance she had delivered.
Images: Thomas Anders, Andreas Putting EBU
