Delta Goodrem has delivered Australia to the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time in three years. <\/p>\n
The Australian singer-songwriter delivered a spectacular semi-final performance on Friday morning of her song Eclipse at the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna, Austria.<\/p>\n
The country was voted through to the finals by popular vote, which will take place on Saturday night local time. <\/p>\n
Australia joins Bulgaria, Ukraine, Norway, Romania, Malta, Cyprus, Albania, Denmark, and Czechia in the finals.<\/p>\n
Those second-round winners will compete against first-round winners: Greece, Finland, Belgium, Sweden, Moldova, Israel, Serbia, Croatia, Lithuania, and Poland.<\/p>\n
Australia was admitted to Eurovision 11 years ago on a wild card entry in 2015. <\/p>\n
95,000 tickets have been sold for this year’s event to fans from 75 countries and territories, and the European Broadcasting Union expects it will be the largest live audience in years.<\/p>\n
Goodrem spoke to SBS News’ chief correspondent Ben Lewis on Thursday ahead of her performance, telling him that she was “excited” to take her song to the Austrian stage and that Eurovision is a world of its own.<\/p>\n
“It’s really special, it’s a really incredible way to step into the music where people can get to know the songs and support the songs… It’s really amazing to learn all the different aspects of this,” Goodrem said.<\/p>\n
The singer’s pop power ballad is an original track written by Goodrem in collaboration with Grammy-winning Swedish songwriter Jonas Myrin and Los Angeles-based songwriter Ferras Alqaisi. <\/p>\n
Performed on a raised platform, Goodrem joked that the stage theatrics took her “a bit higher than I realised.”<\/p>\n
She added that she felt her fellow Australian icon and Eurovision predecessor, Olivia Newton-John, would be “watching over” the proceedings.<\/p>\n
READ MORE<\/p>\n
On the idea that she might deliver Australia its first-ever Eurovision victory, Goodrem argued the country would make an “amazing” host and that the Europeans would just have to get up at 4 am as Australians are accustomed to doing each year.<\/p>\n
The winner of Eurovision’s country of origin will traditionally host the event the following year. <\/p>\n
Last year, some 2.2 million Australians tuned into the singing competition.<\/p>\n
How to watch Eurovision in Australia<\/p>\n
The second semi-final will be broadcast in Australia at 5am AEST on Friday 15 May.<\/p>\n
SBS will also broadcast the grand final live at 5am AEST on Sunday 17 May, with the SBS News online team covering all the action in a live blog.<\/p>\n
For those who want a sleep-in \u2014 or to relive the excitement \u2014 SBS will air prime-time ‘access all areas’ broadcasts from 15\u201317 May at 7.30pm AEST.<\/p>\n
You can watch the broadcasts live on SBS<\/a> and SBS On Demand<\/a>.<\/p>\n For the latest from SBS News,\u00a0download our app<\/a> and\u00a0subscribe to our newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Delta Goodrem has delivered Australia to the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-671276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}