Basel, SWITZERLAND – Young artists facing the intense pressure of competition must have confidence to make it through, singer JJ of Austria said after he won the Eurovision Song Contest.
“Believe in yourself, that’s the most important thing,” JJ said. “There has to be only one person that believes in you, and that should be you yourself.”
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JJ, who won with his pop-opera song “Wasted Love,” advised young perfomers to try to shake off stress.
“Be true to yourself, stay true to yourself and take everything with ease,” said JJ. “If you put yourself under too much pressure, you’ll be scared to fail.”
He added, “It’s fine to fail. That’s part of life.”
Having support from people who will “catch you up whenever there is a tiny downfall,” matters too, JJ said.
“Make sure you have your closest and dearest people around you,” he said.
At 24, JJ – whose name off stage is Johannes Pietsch – was one of the youngest to compete in Saturday’s competition in Basel, Switzerland.
A suspenseful finale
Though JJ had been a favorite among the 26 contestants, his win was not a certainty.
After four hours of pure excitement in the Grand Final came a shocking voting sequence that pitted Austria with Israel for first place.
The winner is decided based on two votes – one from juries representing each participating country, and one from televotes cast online by the public.
Austria won the jury vote with 258 points. Switzerland came in second with 214 points.
Although Israel placed 15th in the juried votes with 60 points, televotes pushed Israel’s song forward.
Israel received 297 televotes, pushing its song, “New Day Will Rise” by Yuval Raphael to first place.
Because the televotes were read in reverse order according to the jury points, Austria’s televotes were the last to be read.
At the end, there was a split screen showing the two artists. Either Israel would win – or Austria. The tension was palpable.
The crowd in the arena was silent, awaiting the results. Then some began to chant “Austria.”
Israel has been part of the Eurovision Song Contest since 1973 and won it four times. In 2019, the contest took place in Tel Aviv.
But since the war in Gaza, crowd sentiment towards Israel has shifted.
When it was announced that Austria had received 178 televotes – enough to win it all – the crowd screamed in celebration.
People were hugging each other and crying together, embodying the contest’s theme, ‘United by Music.’
The winner’s story
Born in Vienna, Austria in 2001, JJ spent his childhood in Dubai and returned to Austria when he was 15, according to his Eurovision bio. After graduating high school, JJ studied at the Vienna State Opera, while also taking part in shows like Starmania.
Now 24, JJ studies solo singing at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna, while also performing as a soprano at the Vienna State Opera, according to his Eurovision bio. His recent performances include roles in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Mozart’s Zauberflöte.
At the Grand Final on Saturday, JJ offered three minutes of cinematic performance with his song “Wasted Love.”
In the show’s only black and white color scheme, JJ is seen navigating a storm while on his boat prop, delivering vocals with perfection and drawing cheers from the crowd.
In a meet and greet with fans at Eurovision, JJ explained that “Wasted Love” is about unreciprocated love. A symbol he uses with the song is the paper boat. The person he wrote the song about used to make origami for him, especially paper boats, he told fans.
The symbol also fits well with the maritime metaphors in the song’s lyrics: I’m an Ocean of love. And you’re scared of water or When you let me go, I barely stay afloat.
At the end of the music video, the paper boat is destroyed – seemingly a metaphor for the end of the relationship.
“Wasted Love,” released in March, drew an immediate positive response from Eurovision fans and fan media. In the first two minutes of the song, he showcases his incredible ability to reach the heights of a soprano, making him stand out from all the other artists.
The end of the song is the dramatic climax reached with the introduction of a sudden techno beat that splits JJ’s opera vocals and the word wasted is constantly repeated.
“Wasted Love” is the third win for Austria at Eurovision, after Udo Jürgens’ “Merci, Chéri” in 1966 and Conchita Wurst’s “Rise Like A Phoenix” in 2014.
Though “Wasted Love” was JJ’s first single, he told reporters at the press conference after the contest that there is definitely more music to come.
In 2026, the Eurovision Song Contest will be held in Austria, with Vienna and Innsbruck already having announced their interest as host cities. It will be the 70th year of the contest.
Florian Gashi is a Junior Reporter with Youth Journalism International.
