ESC preliminary decision: Lord Of The Lost represent Germany in Liverpool

Preliminary decision in Cologne
“Blood & Glitter” is “Our song for Liverpool”: Lord Of The Lost drive to ESC 2023 for Germany

The decision has been made: The hard rock and metal band Lord Of The Lost will represent Germany at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool. The opinions of the jury and the audience differed widely.

The band Lord Of The Lost will represent Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) on May 13, 2023 in Liverpool. At the German preliminary round in Cologne, the audience and an international jury chose the Hamburg metal and hard rock band with their title “Blood & Glitter” as the winner, followed by Ballermann star Ikke Hipgold and “The Voice of Germany” participant Will Church a shared second place.

All placements of the ESC preliminary decision on Friday evening at a glance:

The band Frida Gold (“All women in me are tired”) had to cancel their participation in the approximately two-hour live show “Our song for Liverpool” moderated by Barbara Schöneberger due to the illness of their singer Alina Süggeler.

Half of the points for the evaluation were awarded by eight juries from eight countries (Switzerland, the Netherlands, Finland, Spain, Lithuania, Ukraine, Austria and Great Britain), each with five members from show or music business. The other 50 percent came from the German audience, who were able to vote online for a week before the show and by calling and texting during the preliminary round.

ESC final awarded to Liverpool

In the first published jury ranking, Will Church was ahead, followed by singer-songwriter Anica Russo and René Miller. In the audience voting, on the other hand, the overall winners of Lord Of The Lost led, followed by Ikke Hipgold and folk-pop singer Patty Gurdy. The album “Blood & Glitter” by the winners around singer and guitarist Chris Harms was number one in the German charts at the beginning of the year.

Last year, the Ukrainian band Kalush won the ESC with the song “Stefania”. The German representative Malik Harris ended up in last place with “Rockstars”. In 2021, Jendrik was penultimate with “I Don’t Feel Hate”. Contrary to custom, this year’s ESC will not take place in the country of last year’s winners due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The European Broadcasting Union therefore awarded the final of the competition to runner-up Sam Ryder’s country, Great Britain. The British BBC will co-produce the program with the Public Service Broadcaster of Ukraine. Russian broadcasters anticipated their possible exclusion by leaving the European Broadcasting Union last year.

You can see the ESC preliminary decision again in the ARD media library.