Who is Theodor Andrei? Meet Romania’s Eurovision 2023 representative

On February 11th, the Romanian public television station TVR held the grand final of Selecția Națională 2023, their pre-selection event to choose Romania’s representative for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool. After several elimination rounds and the grand final, the successor to the great WRS and his successful song “Llámame” was finally revealed.

Despite having the lowest viewership in the history of the Romanian national final, Theodor Andrei managed to garner the maximum support from both the Romanian jury and online voting to win the Selecția Națională 2023 with his song “D.G.T. (Off and on)”. Thanks to this song, Theodor Andrei, at only 18 years old, will take to the stage in Liverpool.

Get to know Theodor Andrei better

Theodor Andrei is an 18-year-old from Bucharest (born on October 9th, 2004) who first gained recognition in 2017 on the talent show Vocea Romaniei Junior, the Romanian version of The Voice Kids. At just 13 years old, he demonstrated his vocal and artistic abilities, making it to the semi-finals of the competition.

This is where his career began, and his semi-final appearance on The Voice Kids inspired him to continue growing as an artist. After a few years of training, he decided to audition for the Romanian version of X Factor. However, this time, he only made it to the boot camp phase of the show, one of the earlier stages of the competition.

Despite this setback, on October 12th, 2022, he released his debut album “Fragile“, which won the Myosotis Award for best singer-songwriter creation, for the song “Artist”. During this time, he has also composed over 100 songs for various artists, some of which he is keeping for future projects.

He has also been awarded the Grand Mihaela Runceanu Festival Trophy 2022 and the Grand “Alexandria Pop Fest” Festival Trophy 2022. Now, at 18 years old, he faces one of the toughest challenges of his professional career, taking to the stage in Liverpool and representing Romania at Eurovision 2023.

“D.G.T. (Off and on)” – Theodor Andrei’s Song for Liverpool

Theodor Andrei’s song for Liverpool, “D.G.T. (Off and on)”, is about a toxic relationship in which contradictory patterns are established between one’s feelings and the logical decisions that must be made. Additionally, due to the context of the war in Ukraine, which is being experienced in Europe, Theodor aims to send a message of love and anti-war through his performance.

For Theodor, this experience can be applied to his personal situation. During his adolescence, at the age of 12 or 13, he was a victim of bullying in his school environment. However, this traumatic experience made him value things that he had not been able to see before, and with this song, he wants people to stop being upset with everything and find the reasons that make them happy.

Regarding the meaning of the title, D.G.T. is a play on words, as in Romanian, this combination of letters is pronounced ‘degete’, which means ‘fingers’. The song’s lyrics use the Romanian saying ‘A juca pe cineva pe degete’, literally ‘to play with someone on their fingers’, which actually means to deceive someone.

Lyrics of «D.G.T. (Off and on)»

Romania at Eurovision

Romania has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest since 1994. They attempted to debut in 1993, but failed to qualify for the Eastern European countries semifinal, delaying their debut until 1994, in which they participated with Dan Bittman and “Dincolo de nori”.

Their best results have been two third places with “Let Me Try” in 2005 and “Playing With Fire” in 2010, performed by Paula Seling and Ovi. Since then, their career in the contest has been a mix of ups and downs. A black mark in Romania’s Eurovision history was in 2016, when due to TVR’s debt, Romania was disqualified three weeks before the competition for accumulating a debt of over 10 million euros and failing to resolve it within the established deadline.

Their poor results and the financial problems of the Romanian television have been particularly noticeable since 2018, the first year they did not qualify for the final since reintroduction in 2004, and since then in the following two editions they have not made it to the Saturday night gala.

To make matters worse, the contest has experienced an audience crisis in the country in recent years, mainly due to the financial crisis and the audience that Romanian TVR suffers, leaving Eurovision in the country with less than 3% of viewership, making it the country with the least amount of followers of the contest.

In the 2022 edition, the country qualified for the final once again after three consecutive eliminations in the semifinals thanks to WRS and his song “Llámame”, although they had to settle for the 18th position in the grand final of the contest.