Who are Voyager? Meet the band who is representing Australia at Eurovision 2023

It is not just Finland who is interested in sending rock or metal to the Eurovision Song Contest, but this time the dose will come from the furthest participant of all: Australia. The progressive band Voyager, who already finished in second place in last year’s Australia Decides pre-selection with their song “Dreamer”, will represent Australia in Eurovision. However, this will be the third time the group has approached the contest, as they were also in the running for the cancelled 2020 pre-selection, although they did not make it to the televised show.

The song that Voyager will perform in Liverpool is called Promise and is entirely created by the current members of the group: Daniel Estrin, Simone Dow, Scott Kay, Ashley Doodkorte, and Alex Canion.

Get to know Voyager

Voyager was formed in 1999 at the University of Western Australia in Perth under their first configuration, from which only Daniel Estrin remains as a member after the departure of Mark Baker and Adam Lovris a year later. In fact, the group would not release their first album, Element V until 2003, whose distribution around the world between that year and 2004 catapulted them to relative fame in rock, metal, and alternative circles of the time, even becoming opening acts for the legendary Steve Vai in Perth. In 2005, the band played for the first time outside of Western Australia and experienced new changes in their line-up before the release of their second album.

Thus, UniVers was recorded in 2006 as the band’s second LP, after which they began to participate in festivals and became known as one of the promises of alternative rock worldwide, mainly in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom through initiatives such as ProgPower. Despite not being released when expected, UniVers finally saw the light in 2007 in Europe, resulting in disproportionate critical acclaim, being considered album of the year in Belgian and Finnish magazines. Consequently, the band began their own tours throughout Europe and Australia, playing with greats of the genre such as Finnish Nightwish, Americans House of Lords and Queensrÿche, and Swedes Deathstars, all before 2010.

The band took a slight turn towards more commercial rock with their third album, I Am the ReVolution, released in 2009. Both the album itself and some of its songs won nominations and awards at the Western Australian Music Industry Awards and the specialized MusicOz Awards. The band’s fourth LP would arrive in 2011, when The Meaning of I marked a significant change towards notoriety thanks to collaborations with members of groups such as Royal Hunt or Tesseract and tours with Finnish Children of Bodom or Dutch Epica.

Eventually, Voyager managed to release three more albums: V in 2013, Ghost Mile in 2017, and Colours in the Sun in 2019; although they did not receive as much success as the previous ones. It was after these albums that the band began to show interest in the Eurovision Song Contest: their first attempt came in 2020, when their song Runaway, unfortunately did not make it to the Australia Decides gala that year. However, they did achieve this milestone after the pandemic, reaching a surprising second place in the Australia Decides 2022 with Dreamer, being the public favorites and only 3 points behind Sheldon Riley.

Then, the public broadcaster SBS canceled the Australia Decides competition for 2023 in November, surprisingly announcing the country’s return to internal selection. Three months later, on Tuesday, February 21, SBS announced Voyager as Australia’s representatives at the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest with their new single “Promise,” which was released the same day.

«Promise» by Voyager Lyrics

Australia in the Eurovision Song Contest

Australia made its debut in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2015 as a special guest, going straight to the final as a prize for having such a large and consistent audience for decades despite being geographically far from Europe and not having participated in the contest before. Guy Sebastian opened the door with his hit “Tonight Again,” finishing fifth in Vienna. Consequently, the country continued to be invited by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in the following years until today.

However, the best result for Australia did not take long to come, and Korean-born but Australian-based soloist Dami Im almost won the contest and won the jury in 2016 with “Sound of Silence,” in one of the most praised performances of recent years.

Since then, Australia has enjoyed two more top 10 results thanks to Isaiah Firebrace and Kate Miller-Heidke, but since 2021, they have had fairly modest results, failing to reach the final in 2021 with Montaigne’s live-on-tape and settling for a more than discreet 15th place last year in Turin with Sheldon Riley and his emotional ballad “Not the Same.”

Will Voyager be able to return Australia to their history of great results? We’ll be reading your thoughts!