Lena's Title Defense Flops at Home

MAY 15 2011 · 12:20

Lena Meyer-Landrut · "Taken by a Stranger" · Germany · 2011 Placement: 10 · Score: 107 · Language: English · Composers: Gus Seyffert, Nicole Morier, Monica Birkenes · Venue: Esprit Arena · Host: Düsseldorf, Germany · Type: return · Broadcast: streaming era One year after winning Eurovision 2010 for Germany with 'Satellite', Lena Meyer-Landrut returns to defend the title on home soil. She takes the Esprit Arena stage in a severe all-black outfit with dangling sparkles, backed by two dancers, performing 'Taken by a Stranger' — a slinky mid-tempo Portishead-adjacent electro number. The vocal is fine. The song is deliberately less mainstream than 'Satellite'. 107 points for 10th place. Azerbaijan wins with Ell & Nikki. Context Stefan Raab, Germany's producer who had built 'Satellite' the previous year, was involved in 'Taken by a Stranger' but the song was selected by public vote. Lena had been reportedly reluctant to defend; the title pressure had been enormous. The 10th-place finish wasn't catastrophic but felt like an anticlimax. Legacy Lena's 2010-2011 arc became a standard reference for Eurovision's defending-champion pressure. She subsequently built a successful German pop career. 'Taken by a Stranger' aged better in critical hindsight than on the night — it's often cited as more musically sophisticated than 'Satellite'. Germany wouldn't come close to winning again until it didn't; the 2010 Lena win remains Germany's most recent.