Eurovision Winner Loreen Makes French Debut, Reflects on Moroccan Heritage

Eleven years after her first triumph at Eurovision in 2012 with her song "Euphoria", Loreen won the competition again this year in Liverpool with her song "Tattoo". Last Friday, she performed at the NRJ Music Tour in Fréjus (Var). Her first meeting with the French audience. "The French are very upright, you have to earn your respect and trust. So this concert was like a first step in my relationship with France. You’re not the kind to applaud out of politeness, it’s very honest and authentic. And that means that when you applaud, then you really like it," Loreen confided to the newspaper Le Parisien.

The young woman, who considers herself a "spiritual person", explained why she decided to enter the competition again. "When they offered me this song (Tattoo), at the first listen, I had exactly the same feeling as with ’Euphoria’ in 2012. I told myself that the universe wanted me to go in that direction. In three weeks, I had made my decision and I went for it," she details, specifying that she started working on the song in October 2022. "For those 3 minutes on stage, I changed my whole life. I was working six days a week... I had to be disciplined. The public was expecting something, it’s a matter of respect. It was a huge sacrifice. It’s not enough to just come and sing, you have to work," affirms the singer of Moroccan origin.

Loreen also talks about her Moroccan origins, a source of her "connection" with nature. "My immediate family is in Sweden, I have 6 brothers and sisters. But most of the rest of the family lives in Morocco, in Spain... My Moroccan culture is a very strong heritage... Since I represented Sweden, few people know that I’m originally from Morocco. But I’m North African, and that’s reflected in my ’Tattoo’ performance: the hand movements, the henna, the symbols, the sandstorms... I wanted to represent this diversity, this blend... Besides, in France, people tell me ’Oh you’re Moroccan’, while in Sweden it’s very rare, we’re not many."

Regarding La Zarra’s middle finger, the French candidate at Eurovision, also of Moroccan origin, Loreen believes that "her gesture is linked to a disappointment: we work so hard for this performance and we don’t get what we expected. I’ve been on both sides, I’ve won, I’ve lost (eliminated in the repechage of the Swedish selection for Eurovision in 2017). She may have had a feeling of too much at that moment." And to conclude: "We love Eurovision. It’s a competition, but people gather to watch, like a party... A super positive energy comes out of it. The day France says ’ah but it’s not bad, there’s something to it’, it will win every year. If you send Daft Punk, you don’t even need to organize a contest (laughs)".