Voyager on what it means to represent Australia at Eurovision 2023

For the first time since Australia made its debut at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2015, a band has been selected to represent the country in the world’s biggest music competition.

Voyager, a genre-bending synth-metal quintet from Perth, will go up against 36 competing countries at the international event in Liverpool, United Kingdom next week.

Speaking with Yahoo Lifestyle ahead of the competition, frontman Danny Estrin says it’s “an absolute honour” to be chosen as Australia’s representative after working for over 20 years in the music industry.

“It's almost like a reward and a prize for years and years of hard work and slogging, doing the live music circuit, doing albums and touring the world,” he shares. “It's kind of like a pat on the back and it's recognition.”

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The keyboardist and vocalist adds that he’s most excited about bringing the band’s unique music style to the world stage and “forcing people to listen to it”.

“One of the challenges that we've always had as Voyager is when people go, ‘Oh, what's it like?’ and we go, ‘It’s like pop, metal, synth, I don’t really know, you just have to listen to it’, and people don’t,” he details. “Because if I tell you something that you should listen to and I can't really explain what it is, you’re going to be like, ‘Yeah, not really interested’.

“So being able to actually capture people's attention, whether they like it or not, and go, ‘This is what we do’ and have hopefully 165 million people tune in and go, ‘Wow, this is great’, that to me is a huge win.”

Promise

Voyager have been long-time super fans of Eurovision and have launched several attempts to compete since Australia first joined the contest eight years ago.

They even came in second at Australia Decides last year with their song Dreamer, however, Danny believes their entry this year, Promise, is even better.

“We obviously wrote it for Eurovision and with Eurovision in mind, much more than the previous song,” he says. “I think it’s almost a better song for Eurovision because it's much more staged, it’s got mystery, it’s got a bit of groove, it’s got a dark moment and it's got a light moment.”

While he describes Voyager as the “underdog” of the competition, especially with a handful of returning artists and even 2012 winner Loreen among those performing, Danny says he has enjoyed seeing how people have reacted to the song around the world.

“They’re surprised Australia is sending a metal band, we’ve never done that before, they’re surprised when they see the clip, and then they're surprised when they like it,” he remarks.

“They’re like, ‘This is not my kind of music, but I like it’, and that’s really really, really cool. So being able to create that with Promise, I think that has really shown that the song was well crafted and is the right song for Eurovision 2023.”

The 67th Eurovision Song Contest airs 10 - 14 May LIVE and in prime time on SBS and SBS On Demand.

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