{"id":508645,"date":"2026-03-02T03:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T03:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/508645\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T03:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T03:06:08","slug":"delta-goodrem-to-represent-australia-at-eurovision-2026-australian-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/508645\/","title":{"rendered":"Delta Goodrem to represent Australia at Eurovision 2026 | Australian music"},"content":{"rendered":"

Delta Goodrem will represent Australia at Eurovision<\/a> in May, the 70th anniversary of the annual song contest.<\/p>\n

The 41-year-old singer \u2013 one of the country\u2019s best-loved and bestselling pop stars \u2013 heralds a shift in Australia\u2019s Eurovision selections, which have been smaller breakout acts and genre pioneers. She is the 11th entrant since Australia joined the competition in 2015 and will represent the country in Vienna, Austria.<\/p>\n

\u201cEurovision is a \u2026 natural love for me,\u201d Goodrem says, pointing to the two greatest influences in her life: Olivia Newton-John and C\u00e9line Dion, \u201cwho have both been on the Eurovision stage\u201d.<\/p>\n

To be chosen, she says, feels like \u201ca celebration\u201d \u2013 of a career which has leapt from milestone to milestone and cemented her in Australian pop history. She signed her first record deal at 15 before releasing her debut album, Innocent Eyes, which remains the second-highest selling Australian album and, by statistical estimates, graced one in every four Australian households<\/a> when it was released in 2003.<\/p>\n

In the intervening decades, she has released six more albums, judged eight seasons of The Voice Australia, played Newton-John in a biopic of the star, toured globally, started her own charity and spent one brief stint on stage as Cats\u2019 grand dame Grizabella. Even though Eurovision has been \u201ccircling\u201d her for a few years, the prospect has been waylaid by other projects.<\/p>\n

Goodrem at the World Music awards in California in 2005. Photograph: Sipa US\/Alamy<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until 2025, during a limited run of anniversary shows for her second album, Mistaken Identity, that the suggestion became feasible. When she got the official call-up later that year it felt like fate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really like \u2026 \u2018This is meant to be the timing,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cThis is the alignment. Let\u2019s do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

By Christmas she was deep in writing sessions. \u201cI just locked the door. I got my favourite songwriters \u2026 and we stayed in with three pianos having an amazing, creative time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The resulting track, Eclipse, is every bit as dramatic as its cosmic imagery, brimming with stars and moonlight and \u201cplanets aligning\u201d. It opens with a plucked harp before a gust of wind sends it skywards with a key change and a thundering chorus: \u201cThe world stops for us \/ Only love exists \/ When we eclipse!\u201d<\/p>\n

The song, Goodrem says, \u201creally is about alignment and everything working \u2026 in that one moment. It\u2019s kind of magical when it happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

An eclipse \u2013 and its war between light and shade \u2013 feels apt for Goodrem\u2019s career, which has often seen her alchemise personal difficulties into music. Four months after she released Innocent Eyes, at the peak of her breakout, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma and spent the better part of the following year in recovery. In 2018 a complication from surgery paralysed a nerve in her tongue, forcing her to relearn how to speak and sing from scratch \u2013 an experience she wrote about in her 2020 single Paralyzed.<\/p>\n

The biggest challenge of her career, Goodrem says, is \u201cI have grown up in front of everybody \u2026 You can\u2019t be in it this long and not have had different seasons, reasons and lines, and I think that I\u2019ve tried very hard to stay true to my intention, which was people, connection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goodrem takes photos with fans after a piano performance last year at St Pancras station in London. Photograph: James Manning\/PA<\/p>\n

Now, Goodrem is on the precipice of another challenge: representing her country at an event mired in geopolitical controversy. Five countries \u2013 Spain, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Ireland and Iceland \u2013 decided to boycott this year\u2019s Eurovision<\/a>, after the contest\u2019s organising body declined to expel Israel over its conduct in the war against Hamas in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Did she consider the boycott in her decision? \u201cI think it\u2019s really important to \u2026 take everything into account,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve stayed true to my intention from day one, which [is music as] a place of unity, togetherness \u2026 I believe in the healing powers and hope of music.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for how she would respond to those calling on Australia to join the boycott, Goodrem says: \u201cI would probably revert to saying that music is a place of hope and healing \u2026 Eurovision has been going for 70 years, and I think there\u2019s been a lot going on in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Delta Goodrem will represent Australia at Eurovision in May, the 70th anniversary of the annual song contest. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-508645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}