Eurovision winner Loreen passionately defends the contest amid calls for a boycott over Israel’s inclusion

Eurovision winner Loreen has defended the contest amid ongoing calls for a boycott over Israel’s inclusion.

The singer, 40, won the contest for Sweden for a second time in 2023 for her song Tattoo, 11 years after she first took home the crown for Euphoria in 2012.

Israel’s participation in the Eurovision has been controversial this year with some believing the country should not be included given the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. 

But Loreen has insisted the contest brings joy to the millions of people around the world who watch it.

Speaking to The Sun, she said: ‘Positive attracts positive and negative attracts negative. If we were to boycott or shut this hub of positive energy, punishing millions for the distortion somewhere else, that would be so destructive.’

Israel’s Eden Golan made it through Thursday night’s semi-final in Malmo with her song Hurricane. She will now perform in the final on Saturday

‘Right now we need more countries to connect with this, more artists, more creators, more people to generate good energy.

‘Distortion, I call it distortion, these weird things happening are trauma-tising all of us. Start generating love because that is key to healing traumas and all this negative energy.’

Loreen added that she has stopped checking her social media lately because she ‘can’t cry all day’ while looking at everyone’s opinions.

The Swedish star is only the second performer to win the Eurovision twice after Johnny Logan won for Ireland in 1980 and 1987. 

Loreen will be unveiling her transcendent new spiritual-pop single, Forever via Promised Land Recordings at the Eurovision final on Saturday. 

She explained: ‘And now in the second chapter, Forever, there is an awakening. It’s about a moment where you’ve gone through all the earth and dust – you’ve gone through life – and you can see things clearly. You’re leaving all your illusions behind and you’re free.’

Earlier this week, Loreen announced her juggernaut 2025 UK & European tour kicking off in Netherlands on 15 February with 20 stops across Europe before she makes her way to Birmingham on 17 March, a headline show at London’s iconic Eventim Apollo on 19 March before continuing onto Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol and Glasgow before wrapping in Dublin Ireland at 3 Olympia on 27 March. 

Tickets went on sale on Friday at 9am at LoreenOfficial.com. 

It comes after Israel’s Eden Golan made it through Thursday night’s semi-final in Malmo with her song Hurricane. She will now perform in the final on Saturday. 

Golan was ordered to stay in her hotel room earlier on Thursday by her country’s national security agency as thousands of pro-Palestine protesters demonstrated in Malmo, calling for her to be excluded from the competition. 

Greta Thunberg joined the thousands of protesters in the southern Swedish city demonstrating against Israel competing in the famous song contest.

The prediction was correct, with as many as 5,000 people taking to the city’s streets today, including the young Swede – who was pictured wearing a keffiyeh, a black and white shawl commonly used to show support for Palestine, around her body in the centre of the crowd within a sea of Palestinian flags.

Loreen said: ‘If we were to boycott or shut this hub of positive energy, punishing millions for the distortion somewhere else, that would be so destructive’

Israel’s participation in the Eurovision has been controversial this year with some believing the country should not be included given the ongoing Israel-Hamas war

Loreen added: ‘Right now we need more countries to connect with this, more artists, more creators, more people to generate good energy’

‘Young people are leading the way and showing the world how we should react to this,’ Thunberg told Reuters news agency. She refused to comment on why she had joined the protest, only saying it was ‘good’ as the march took place.

During the demonstrations, smoke canisters in the colours of the Palestinian flag were set off and protesters, some of whom have dogs, young children and bicycles with them, were carrying signs displaying images of Gaza civilians who have been injured amid the Hamas-Israel conflict.

Other banners displayed messages including ‘welcome to Genocide song contest’ and ‘stop using Eurovision to whitewash Israeli crimes’.

The Hamas attack saw some 1,200 people in Israel killed and around 250 kidnapped by gunmen and taken back into Gaza. Since then, Israeli attacks on the coastal territory have resulted in over 34,000 deaths and a humanitarian catastrophe.

There is high security around the delegations from all the countries, according to Malmo police. ‘We’re keeping a bit of an extra eye on Israel of course, because of the situation,’ Lotta Svensson, a police incident commander, told Reuters on Sunday.

The EBU, which organises the event, has resisted calls for Israel to be excluded but asked the country to modify the lyrics of its original song ‘October Rain’. 

Despite the fears over her safety, Ms Golan says she has received a lot of support and hasn’t seen any negative comments about her previous song October Rain.

Commentators thought some of the original lyrics, like ‘There is no air left to breathe’ and ‘They were all good children, every one of them’, were about victims of the Hamas attack and therefore was deemed too political.

‘I was kind of shocked when the European Broadcasting Union didn’t approve the song,’ Ms Golan said.

‘I don’t think the first version was political. The song is about a girl going through her own problems, her own emotions. It wasn’t anything to do with October 7.’

At first, the Israeli state-owned TV network Kan, which supplied the song, said it would rather Eden dropped out of the competition than change the lyrics.

Eden  celebrated gaining a place in the final during the second semi-final at the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo

The 20-year-old singer took to the stage to sing the emotional song: Hurricane

The song Hurricane was reworked from a previous track called October Rain, believed to reference the Hamas attacks on Israel

It was only after an intervention by the country’s President Isaac Herzog, who called for the ‘necessary adjustments’, that it relented.

Ms Golan told the Mail that the controversy ‘caught me off guard’.

She said: ‘I was shocked and confused. But when they said we had to change the lyrics, I said: ‘Let’s do everything possible to make it happen.’

‘I feel like us participating in Eurovision this year is very important, and has much more meaning than any other year.’

After several revisions, October Rain was renamed as Hurricane and now tells the story of a woman emerging from a personal crisis.

Musically, it’s the same song but the lyrics are more generic, the references to the massacre replaced with phrases like ‘every day, I’m losing my mind’ and ‘I’m still broken from this hurricane’.

The end of the song, which Golan sings in Hebrew, has also been altered.

Golan was ordered to stay in her hotel room by her country’s national security agency as thousands of pro-Palestine protesters demonstrated in Malmo, calling for her to be excluded from the competition

The original pay-off, which had references to poisoned air and dead children have been changed to: ‘No need for big words, only prayers. Even if it’s hard to see, you always leave me one small light.’

The singer – who arrived in the city last week sporting a yellow pin, symbolising support for the release of hostages held by Hamas – insists that she is safe in Malmo despite the threats against her.

‘I’m getting a lot of love and support from my family and from the professional team that has become like a family.’

She added: ‘Protests are of course not pleasant,but I can’t wait to be there on stage and try to make people feel something in the three minutes that I have. I’m very focused in my mission.’