Over the past two years Greece has managed back-to-back Top 10 placings. And now the Greek broadcaster ERT hopes to keep the streak going — and to go even higher — with its Eurovision 2023 internal selection.
They’ve now shortlisted seven acts for the contest in Liverpool. The lucky artists made it after a 70-person “Audience Committee” evaluated the songs earlier this week.
Greece: ERT shortlists 7 acts for Eurovision 2023
- Konstantina Iosifidou — “We Are Young”
- Melissa Mantzoukis — “Liar”
- Victor Vernicos — “What They Say”
- Monika — “I’m Proud”
- Leon Of Athens — “Somewhere To Go”
- Klavdia — “Holy Water”
- Maria Maragou & Antonia Kaouri — “Shout Out”
How will Greece choose its Eurovision 2023 artist?
Greece’s selection process involves two panels: A 7-person expert panel from ERT and the Audience Committee. The panel, which functions like a professional jury, accounts for 49.4% of the overall score, while the Audience Committee accounts for the remaining 50.6%.
To form the 70-person committee, ERT’s people conducted a draw among 3,000 applicants. They used a demoscopic system (think Sanremo) that guaranteed the resulting committee would accurately reflect the various age groups that watch Eurovision.
Early in the new year, ERT will meet with artists and representatives from their record labels to assess their plans — from promotion and marketing to staging — before finalizing their scores. As in recent years, the record label’s plans for Eurovision have been an important part of the final decision.
These numbers will be combined with the numbers from the Audience Committee to get a result.
Please note: Their potential entries have not been made public. The videos below are simply meant to showcase some of their earlier work.
Konstantina Iosifidou
The 22-year-old rose to fame in 2018 while competing on The Voice of Greece. She recently released her very first single “Let You Go.”
Based on the official music video, she’s a tender soul. The sound is youthful, even if the words suggest she’s crestfallen.
Melissa Mantzoukis
Melissa made the final of German Pop Idol. She’s collaborated with songwriters from Greece and the Netherlands on a dance track about female empowerment. Her performance of Beyoncé’s “Runnin'” has a lot of fans. But we’re partial to her slaying “Never Enough.” What range!
Victor Vernicos
A proposal from PANIK Records, sixteen-year-old Victor is the youngest of all the acts that remain. Part Danish, Victor works across cultures and, perhaps nodding to the Scandinavian in him, even produces his own music!
Monika
Monika — real name Monica Christodoulou — is among the most popular artists on the shortlist. As you can hear in “Bloody Something,” she’s got a strong and resonant voice and really knows how to work her lower register.
Leon Of Athens
Leon of Athens is not a stranger to the world of Eurovision. He was one of the composers of Greece’s entry from 2019, “Better Love”, sang by Katerine Duska. He has also released a couple of other original songs with Katerine, “Communication” and “ANEMOΣ”.
Other notable collaborations include the remix of “Communication” by American rock band ‘Portugal. The Man’. Additionally, Leon of Athens brought onboard Oscar-nominated Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos to create a short film for the music video of “Baby Asteroid”.
We love how he moves seamlessly between 80s synth and contemporary pop. For his potential Eurovision song, he’s teamed up with singer and songwriter David Sneddon, who he co-wrote “Better Love” with too.
Klavdia
Repped by PANIK Records, Klavdia Papadopoulou rose to fame on The Voice of Greece in 2018, achieving fourth place. As you can hear on her single “Lonely Heart” below, she really knows how to work a modern ballad. Her voice carries emotion well.
Maria Maragou & Antonia Kaouri
Yet another artist from The Voice of Greece, Antonia Kaouri is among the brightest young pop singers in the country. She’s teamed up with the actress Maria Maragkou for a woman x woman duet.
I love the subtitle (or whatever that is called) “Choices, choices…”. That is exactly what I said when I heard who the finalists are, but the way Tatiana said it.
*Tatianna
If “Yes I Do” is similar to her entry, then it must be Monika. I’m mesmerized!
I’m smelling another top 10 finish for Greece this year! And I’m expecting something upbeat!
Bit complicated procedure this year. Also these 7 are completely unknown in Greece. How is ERT expecting to increase the public interest?
Monika is one of the most well-known artists in the English pop scene in Greece. She actually made the scene popular at the end of 00s. She also wrote the soundtrack of The lost daughter, the film with Olivia Colman. Leon of Athens is also pretty popular in Greece and I have seen him have many time lives in London
This is our night was one of my favourite entries of all time from Greece!
Will any of these songs have Greek in them? Kinda want a Greek entry in Greek now instead of English.
The last greek entry I liked was in 2013. Yanna Terzi did perform very bad, this year I appreciated the professionality of Amanda but the song was not my cup of tea.
Melissa for the win?
I like the voices of the participants and I am curious to hear their songs. May the best one win.
Monika!!!! Really??! I would never expect that Eurovision wouldnbensomethingnthat she would considering do. It would be interesting
Klavdia for the win!
Off topic but all 12 Romanian snippets are out.
Songs* Not snippets sorry.
Well some of the songs are of certain quality..
I meant that some of them don’t have studio versions out but instead the artist sang while the instrumental was playing in the room.
Also yes, they are all pretty bad.
i’ll laugh if they go for another nobody from the diaspora
well she wasn’t a nobody, she’d been very successful with antique since 1999
As a Greek, I’m just disappointed that for one more year our song will be in English
Ok but who will choose between these 7 now…
Off topic but somebody has news from Germany, Armenia, France, Czechia, Ireland, Azerbaidjan, Austria, Uk and Switzerland for 2023?
Ok! Thank you! Effectively it’s not very easy to follow 😉
Una, just make your own blog already – always have to look for your comments for more details
French delegation is said to reveal “several surprises” about the 2023 national selection at the beggining of January, but everything is kept mysterious so far.
The other ones have all already detailed their selection process for this year with the exception of Armenia who were hosting Junior’s contest, so let’s see…
Thank you! But we know nothing about Ireland, Czechia, Switzerland and Azerbaidjan, they have already said something about their selection process?
We all know Azerbuyjan will eventually spring up with a local artist set to perform a Swedish penned song
Ireland – Currently assessing the 300+ entries they received for “The Late Late Show Eurovision Special 2023” provisionnaly set for February 3rd. Six songs that are expected to be stronger and more varied than last year’ edition.
Czechia – Recently closed the subsmission window for ESCZ 2023 applications. The show will contain only 3 songs this year.
Switzerland – Keeping their selection process of the past 4 years, with both professional jury and selected viewers of the contest deciding in closed doors on the entry.
Azerbaijan – Still accepting song submissions, probably for an internal selection as usually done.
7? See Malta?
Malta has 40 songs and at the end buys a melfest reject, invalid point
Malta gives a platform for their artists who otherwise might not have a chance to perform live on television and gain this experience
But is that purpose of preselections?
Feels like a national karaoke party where everybody has a drunk relative who gets to get on stage and sing a few bars. Could be fun!
The audience jury seems to have preferred the following three songs: Melissa Mantzoukis – Liar, Klavdia – Holy Water & Victor Vernicos – What they say.
Leon of Athens was ranged in the middle and the three other songs were in Bottom 3 with the audience.
How do you know this,? Where did you get this information?
The Eurovisionfun website reported about this – eurovisionfun.com/en/2022/12/greece-these-are-the-results-of-the-vote-of-the-audience-jury
? doubt that this is accurate at all. Monika is a well known and very good artists I cannot see her song place in the bottom 3
well monika’s song is so slow that makes you fall asleep. Eurovision is not about who is famous in your country, Eurovision is about who has the pest package and most importantly the best song. Monika does not and also she cant sing live just hear the zapion performance. Warning your ears will be bleeding.
Being in the jury, trust me I doubt she will even be 5th lol. Liar was the best by far
did evangelia even submit an entry ??
At least Greeks can choose something. Good luck.
I feel like with Eurovision we need to see what we end up getting, and not rely too much on prior source material. We can see the same artist opt for completely different genres and feels of song, and while some stick to one thing, it quickly becomes predictable and/or stale if it’s not a miracle formula some pop stars are blessed with. These 7 names sound decent individually, but in the end all we’ll judge is the final product. There’s not much to calculate or predict with the artist and song names alone. We’ll wait and see which song… Read more »
Let’s hope Greece can continue hitting the top 10 and not fall out of it or worse fail to qualify. We’ve never had a year where both Greece and Cyprus failed to make the final, but if Greece makes the wrong choice and if Andrew Lambrou’s song is a bomb, there’s a first time for anything. But I do wish both countries Good luck. I don’t want either to bomb, but it’s not in my hands.