Tvorchi wins Vidbir 2023 and will represent Ukraine at Eurovision with the song “Heart of Steel”

The first national final of the Eurovision 2023 season is here. This year Ukraine kicked off the pre-selection weeks with the grand final of its traditional, and controversial, Vidbir, which this year was brought forward to December.

A total of 10 artists competed to become the successor of Kalush Orchestra, selected for the 2022 edition and later for Eurovision 2022

Vidbir 2023 results

After a voting in which both the national jury and the televote submitted their scores, Tvorchi emerged as the winner of tonight’s gala with the song “Heart of Steel”

The full results of the Ukrainian national final are as follows:

Vidbir 2023: How did the mechanics of the Ukrainian national final work out?

The winner of Vidbir was decided from the 10 candidates who sang and fought against each other. Once the performances were over, both the national jury and the audience began to vote , as in previous years has been a decision with a weight of 50% each. As detailed by Suspilne Media, this year, the audience vote took place for the first time through the Diia application. All Ukrainians over the age of 14 will be able to vote for their favourite Vidbir artist both in Ukraine and abroad.

The winner is obliged to conclude an agreement with Ukrainian television on participation in Eurovisionwithin 5 working days after the Final. If this agreement is not concluded, the winner of the Vidbirwill not be able to represent Ukraine at Eurovision andanother representative will be decidedfrom among all the finalists

The Ukrainian public broadcaster also reserves the right to revoke this contract and thustake away the title of Ukrainian representative from any person who subsequently violates any of the rules at any time and to select another winner internally, this point takes great prominence with Ukraine being the one to choose the candidate, because it will not be the first time it happens.

Vidbir 2023: The participating songs

The 10 songs selected for Vidbir 2023 sought to win the contest on Saturday 17 December and represent Ukraine at Eurovision 2023. These are the 10 artists and their respective songs, arranged in the running order in which they performed in the grand final:

You can listen to all the songs below these lines (on the button on the top right you can see the full list of songs and listen to your favourite one):

Vidbir 2023: Meet the 10 participants

2TONE – “КВІТКА”

Few facts we know about this duo, they come from the region of Micto and were presented to the musical talent show The Voice Ukraine in its 12th edition and where they managed to surprise with their way of singing and interpreting, finally they only got two coaches to turn around to have them in their team, they ended up in Potap’s team. They made it all the way to the battle stage where they were eliminated.

FIINKA – “ДОВБУШ”

She is a Ukrainian influencer, on her YouTube channel we can find a wide variety of content, including songs. She has 93,000 followers and her folk music leaves no one indifferent. On Spotify she has almost 4,500 monthly listeners, which will increase after her election.

JERRY HEIL – “WHEN GOD SHUT THE DOOR”

She is a repeat performer on Vidbir, in its 2020 edition. Her attempt was with the song “Vegan” where she came last in the final, an edition that was won by Go-A. She comes well supported with 276k followers on Instagram and the super figure of almost 365,000 monthly listeners on the Spotify music platform. Will she be able to shake off the thorn of her last place in 2020?

KTRUB – “КОЛИСКОВА”

They were also in the 2020 edition of Virbir. A priori they started as one of the favourites to win, coming second in the jury and third in the televote . This resulted in a third place in the final. They also have a good number of followers on Instagram 29.6k as well as on Spotify with 55.000 listeners per month.

MOISEI – “I’M NOT ALONE”

We know very little about him, we know he went viral on the TikTok platform, where decked out in a soldier’s costume he played the violin, while the war was going on.

OY SOUND SYSTEM – “ОЙ, ТУЖУ”

Electronic music fused with rap. On Instagram he has almost 1,000 followers, but there we see that he has not stopped working, touring many music festivals . On their YouTube channel they haven’t released any new music for several years and on Spotify they have only 288 listens. Vidbir will be their great springboard.

TEMBER BLANCHE – “Я ВДОМА”

He also starts with a follower base on Instagram with 11.1k follow ers. With a guitar from him and a beautiful sweet voice from her, plus as a curiosity he has a track with Kalush Orchestra, the track“Калуські вечорниці” has almost 11 million followers. A good ace up his sleeve in the race for a passport to Liverpool.

TVORCHI – “HEART OF STEEL”

Third Vibdir 2020 repeater is Tvorchi with their song “Bonfire”, managed to reach the final of the pre-selection and rise to a creditable fourth place. They are an electronic music band with four albums on the market. They have 120,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and 47.9k followers on Instagram.

DEMCHUK – “ALIVE”

This guy comes from triumphing on social networks, on Instagram he is followed by 456k people, on TikTok 1.6million and on Spotify he has 110.000 monthly listeners. A Ukrainian social phenomenon .

ANGELINA – “STRONGER

The great unknown of the ten candidates. She has no social media profile. Therefore, she will be a new talent to know and discover.

Vidbir 2023: Meet the guest artists

Even taking place from the Kiev Metro, the Vidbir continues the staging of other editions and features live performances by Ukrainian artists to liven up the show.

The grand final of Vidbir 2023 will feature performances by Jamala, Zlata Ognevich, Verka Serduchka and Dmytro Shurov (Pianoboy) during its broadcast.

Vidbir 2023: Find out more from the jury

Through a week-long open vote on the Diya app , the public was able to vote for those candidates they felt best qualified to contribute half the weight of the decision to choose Kalush Orchestra’s successor at Eurovision 2023. Taras Topolya, Yulia Sanina and Jamala were chosen among all the candidates as the top three.

TARAS TOPOLYA

He is the leader of the band “Antitila”, but in his fight with Russia he has been very active. He is a volunteer of the 130th battalion of the Territorial Defence Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Volunteer and co-founder of the charitable foundation “Antitila”.

JAMALA

Ukrainian singer and songwriter , this will not be her first time as a judge at the Vidbir. She is also in possession of a crystal microphone as the winner of Eurovision 2016. Earlier this year she was awarded the “Outstanding Artist Leadership Award” by the US Arctic Council.

YULIA SANINA

She is the lead singer of the rock band “The HardKiss”. Singer-songwriter and composer. A TV all-rounder, she was a judge and mentor on the Ukrainian version of the X Factor and a contestant on the TV show Dancing with the stars.

Vidbir 2023: Who will present the gala?

Ukrainian public television announced earlier this week that Kateryna Pavlenko, Zlata Ognevich and Timur Miroshnychenko will be the masters of ceremony for Vidbir 2023, which will be broadcast from the Maidan Nezalezhnosti metro station.

Kateryna Pavlenko

Kateryna Pavlenko is making her debut in the field as a TV presenter, but she is by no means a stranger to the Eurovision world. In 2020, a cancelled festival, and 2021 she was Ukraine’s representative at the Eurovision Song Contest as the vocalist of the band GO_A, finishing in a remarkable fifth place thanks to her song “Shum”.

Zlata Ognevich

Zlata Ognevich was the country’s flag bearer in 2013 with the song “Gravity”, with which she came in a great third place. However, Zlata already knows the medium well, as she was one of the presenters of Junior Eurovision 2013, which was held in Ukraine.

Timur Miroshnychenko

Finally, Timur Miroshnychenko is the veteran in terms of presenting both at Vidbir and with Eurovision. He was one of the masters of ceremonies at Vidbir 2022 and Eurovision 2017, as well as one of the most knowledgeable Eurovision commentators in the country.

UKRAINE AT EUROVISION

Ukraine, ten years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, made its debut at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2003 with Oleksandr Ponomariov and his song Hasta la vista, which scored only 30 points, placing the country in 14th place. The following year the experience was very different. For the first time there were semi-finals and Ruslana not only qualified but won the festival with Wild dances, scoring points from all participating countries except Switzerland. Since then, Ukraine has very rarely been out of the top 10 in the final of the festival (up to 10 times, including 6 podiums) and has managed to qualify for all semi-finals.

In 2016 they achieved their second victory with Jamala and her 1944. And other highlights were their participation in 2007, with Verka Serduchka and her iconic rendition of “1944”, which got a 2nd place Dancing Lasha Tumbaiwhich achieved a 2nd place; as well as Maruv’s withdrawal in 2019 due to the Ukrainian broadcaster’s abusive clauses prohibiting the singer from performing concerts or attending awards shows in Russia.

In 2021, the group Go_A achieved great success in Rotterdam with Shum (5th place with 364 points), a song that not only won over the Eurovision audience with the second highest televote score (267 points), but also went viral on social media in the days that followed.

Alina Pash was proclaimed the winner of Vidbir 2022, but since her victory, controversy erupted: the group Kalush Orchestra claimed that there were irregularities in the voting, as they claimed that they won the jury’s vote fraudulently, while they were the televote winners, however, the victory belonged to her because she got seven televote points to the Ukrainian band’s six televote points. Not only was Alina faced with this, but the winner also began to be investigated for an act she performed in Crimea, which at first seemed to comply with Ukrainian legality but became increasingly complicated, as it was concluded that the documents the singer had presented regarding her entry into Crimea from a Ukrainian-permitted zone were not valid.

All this controversy eventually led to Alina’s decision to withdraw from the Eurovision Song Contest, being only the winner of the Vidbir, the Ukrainian pre-selection, without having been nominated as the country’s representative for the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 at any point. She declared that she does not want to “continue to be part of this dirty story”.

Finally, this “Eurodrama” ended up with the runners-up as the flag bearers for Eurovision 2022: Kalush Orchestra, who would later win Eurovision being fourth for the professional jury but the undisputed winners for the televote with a total of 439 points.