Austria Asks Europe Who Writes Its Songs

MAY 15 2023 · 12:45

Teya & Salena · "Who the Hell Is Edgar?" · Austria · 2023 Placement: 15 · Score: 120 · Language: English · Composers: Teodora Špirić, Salena Jones, Ronald Janeček · Venue: M&S Bank Arena · Host: Liverpool, United Kingdom · Type: performance innovation · Broadcast: streaming era Teya and Salena — Austrian duo in matching Victorian-gothic outfits and theatrical makeup — deliver 'Who the Hell Is Edgar?', a song whose concept is that the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe is haunting them and writing their songs. The performance is dark-pop theatricality with typewriter percussion. 120 points for 15th place. Loreen wins for Sweden with 'Tattoo'. Context Teodora Špirić (Teya) was a Serbian-Austrian pop vocalist; Salena Jones an Austrian pop singer. The Poe-as-co-writer concept was meant as metaphor for the music industry's practice of attributing artistic authorship to named talent while producers do most compositional work. ORF's selection was considered one of Austria's more conceptually adventurous Eurovision choices. Legacy 'Who the Hell Is Edgar?' became a surprise streaming hit across Austria, Germany, and central Europe. The song's music-industry critique thesis was picked up by music press as one of Eurovision's more substantive lyrical interventions in years. Teya and Salena continued as a duo and as solo artists in subsequent Austrian pop releases.