Emmelie de Forest sang Only teardrops in 2013.

Emmelie Charlotte-Victoria de Forest was born in Randers in 1993 with a Danish Mother and a Swedish father. She was brought up by her mother in the small town of Mariager in central Denmark. She is in a relationship with Danish musician Jakob Schack Glæsner.

She was always musical and performed along with her mother in the Steve Cameron Gospel Choir.  In her teen years she was performing in Danish musical events, both small and large, moving to Copenhagen where she studied at the Complete Vocal Institute. CVI was formed in 2005 using a teaching method developed to ensure vocal health.

At the age of nineteen years she took part in the Danish National Final to select their Eurovision entry. She was one of the ten acts in the programme, six of which had been selected by a panel and the other four being invited to take part for various other musical reasons. She was one of the three to get to the Superfinal and ultimately won the ticket to Malmö.

A week before Eurovision she released her first album, Only teardrops.

Since winning the contest the Danish European Movement awarded her the Årets Europæer Award (The European of the year Award) and she composed the official song for the 2014 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, Rainmaker. This was performed on the stage at the  B&W Hallerne and also was certified Gold in Denmark.

She has recorded her second studio album with a track from it, Drunk tonight, being performed at the Amsterdam Pride 2014.

The Eurovision song Contest 2013 was the fifty eight edition of the event.

The venue was the Malmö Arena in Sweden. This is a hall which is well used to hosting some of the Swedish selection heats in Melodifestivalen. It’s a multi purpose building and the home of HockeyAllsvenskan ice hockey club Malmö Redhawks. The capacity is a maximum of 15,500.

For its fifth hosting of Eurovision, SVT the state broadcaster chose to run a cost neutral event. The theme of the contest was We are one and symbolised by a butterfly.

Thirty nine countries participated with Armenia returning after the previous contest in Azerbaijan and Bosnia & Herzegovina, Portugal, Slovakia and Turkey being absent.

Swedish television decided to break from recent tradition and not to use the postcards to promote their own country but to take cameras to that of the participants. They also opened the final using an air bridge with an Olympic-style entrance by the artists, preceded by their flag. Many of those participating had been part of previous contests. On stage this included Valentina Monetta who returned for San Marino for a second year in succession along with the composer Ralph Siegel.

This was the first year that the running order was not decided by a draw. It was decided that the random nature of previous years’ draws did not make for the best television audience experience, and choosing the order would also help songs stand out better. This decision has had a mixed reaction from the dedicated followers.

The first semi final had a close set of points awarded to the top three countries, Ukraine, Russia and Denmark only having 27 points between them. In the second semi the top four, Malta, Norway, Greece and Azerbaijan were separated by 19 points.

In the final the story was very different.

Third place went to Zlata Ognevich singing Gravity for Ukraine, achieving five douze points. Seven countries gave them ten points with an eventual total of 214.

Azerbaijan’s Farid Mammadov sang Hold me and scored the most douze points, getting ten, but only two sets of ten points came their way, so the total came to 234.

The winner was Emmelie de Forest and the song Only teardrops. Denmark received eight douze points, but the seven countries who gave them ten points made a significant difference and they ended up with a final tally of 281.

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