Last year invasion and war prevented the contest from being held for the third time in Ukraine, who racked up their third Eurovision victory in 2022, having only first entered the contest in 2003. This comes on top of consistently good results – they are the only country to have always qualified for the grand final, and they have had twelve top-10 results, and eight top-five results, and even when not favoured by the fandom or juries, they get a lot of love from the televote, which pushed them to 4th in 2021 and 6th last year. They are the most successful country at Eurovision in the 21st century after this year’s hosts, Sweden. Can the team up of rapper Alyona Alyona and singer-songwriter Jerry Heil bring Ukraine continued success?

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Alyona and Jerry are two independent artists who teamed up this year to enter the Ukrainian national selection. Prior to this, Alyona is a well-known rapper and songwriter in Ukraine, and has even featured in an article in the New York Times about promising European music artists. Jerry Heil was a former YouTuber before a professional breakthrough in 2017. She’s a veteran of the Ukrainian national selection, having entered twice before – she came sixth in 2020 with “Vegan” and then third in the selection for 2023 with “When God Shut the Door”. With Alyona, their “Teresa and Maria” triumphed at the national final, coming second in the jury vote, and then in the televote, received over 700,000 public votes, 7 times more than the public vote runner up.

Alyona and Jerry are both co-writers of this song, and it is co-composed by Ivan Klymenko who was the co-writer and co-composer of the 2022 winner “Stefania”. Like Stefania, we have a Ukrainian-language rap part to this song, provided by Alyona of course, and like last year’s entry, we have both Ukrainian and English lyrics – but in a reverse of last year, it’s more Ukrainian than English. There’s a real anthemic feel to this song, yet it also has haunting and quieter moments, provided by Jerry Heil’s beautiful vocals. Ukrainian Eurovision artists seem to, better than anyone else I think, blend both modern and traditional music from their country and turn it into something memorable and stand out.

Last year, Ukraine’s “Heart of Steel” didn’t score very well in the scoreboard app (but was 6th in my own countdown) but I was more in tune with the public in the end given their public vote. This year “Teresa & Maria” has been doing pretty well in the app, though it does demonstrate I think the shortcomings of the scoreboard app in terms of the favoured genres/singers of app users… Betting odds-wise this has remained in the top bunch for the whole season, and while more recent releases pushed it down to fifth at time of writing, I think people would be unwise to rule this out.

I don’t even need to cover qualification chances as this will absolutely qualify for the final. We know Ukraine are masters of Eurovision staging, and having seen some clips and pictures from their first two rehearsals, it’s safe to say they’ve done it again. The staging has completely changed from the (understandably) more restricted national final, and has quite literally elevated as you will see. Combined with the anthemic and dramatic qualities of the song, the impressive vocals, and the confident performances, this is definitely in with a shout of getting Ukraine’s fourth win, and very likely top 5 (and certainly top 10) result.

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Ukraine in the Eurovision Song Contest