Loreen has applauded Johnny Logan for singing her winning Eurovision Song Contest track Euphoria on stage during the 2024 competition.
The Swedish double winner, who made history as the first woman to triumph twice at the competition, will return to the stage of the contest on Saturday at Malmo Arena in Sweden to perform a blend of her new single Forever as well as Tattoo.
Last year, she excelled with Tattoo in Liverpool, when the UK hosted on behalf of Ukraine, having first won the competition in 2012 with Euphoria.
The 40-year-old singer told the PA news agency that she watched Logan, who won Eurovision for Ireland in 1980 and 1987 with What’s Another Year and Hold Me Now, on her phone.
She said: “The first thing that hit me was like this is a really hard song to sing… what’s he going to do?
“Oh, not like how is he going to do? How’s he going to make it? Not like that, more like how is he going to interpret the song? How is he gonna make it his own, which he did.
“And you know, usually when things like this happen I get really shy because it’s just like someone is singing your song… and it was very beautiful with the orchestra, the strings.”
Loreen also called Logan’s emotional rendition “real” and said she “definitely” wants to do a duet with the 69-year-old, who also composed the 1992 winning Eurovision entry Why Me?, but he has “been too busy”.
When asked about who she has been most impressed by in the Eurovision class of 2024, she said that she loves “visual” performances that are “not just a song” before praising the UK’s Olly Alexander.
“I guess that Olly, I like what he visually created. It’s a well thought through performance with all these changes that it’s obviously there’s a narrative, there’s something he’s trying to say. I love that.
“But then again, here we go, I love the Swedish entrants (Marcus & Martinus) also. Because it’s also very visual. I can’t, I can’t decide, see, there’s a problem.”
Loreen also said that she has a chance to create something “beautiful with you guys again”, before adding: “This thing that I’m doing on Saturday, it’s built on to Tattoo.
“You’ll understand when you see it. It’s like, the last chapter, Tattoo was the first chapter and Forever is the last one.
“And it’s just, I’ve tried to add some information that is about all of us, this performance is about love. It’s about us. It’s a declaration of love. It’s you know, it’s about what we are all of us.
“And I hope that when you watch it, you feel very romantic.”
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The singer, who earlier this week announced tour dates for 2025 including at London’s Eventim Apollo, Liverpool’s O2 Academy and Dublin’s 3Olympia, did not rule out doing Eurovision for a third time.
“If somebody asks me and my gut feeling is saying ‘yes, yes, yes, yes’ and I’m like, ‘OK, I need to get a song’,” she said.
“Either way, if my intuition is saying ‘yes’, I guess I just have to go with that. Although I don’t understand it, because I definitely did not understand it last year.
“I was like, this is madness. ‘Why? Why? Am I really doing this? Like, you know, am I really like, OK, I didn’t think I was going to, OK’. Look at me now.”
Loreen’s new single Forever has been released and tickets for the European and UK legs of her tour are available from 9am on Friday.
By Charlotte McLaughlin, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter in Malmo, Sweden
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