When the Austrian countertenor Johannes Pietsch, known as JJ, won the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest with “Wasted Love,” that number’s mix of pop and opera felt just right for a performer who has named Ariana Grande as his favorite singer and who studied at the Vienna State Opera school and the Music and Arts University of Vienna.
JJ, who has an Austrian father and a Filipino mother, grew up in Dubai and Vienna, a background that may help explain his disdain for musical boundaries.
His competitive streak began showing in earnest in 2020, when he was 18 and entered the British version of the TV show “The Voice.” JJ won over the show’s coach will.i.am with a rendition of “The Sound of Music” in his blind audition, and was eliminated in the knockout round. Admittedly, his take on ABBA’s “The Winner Takes It All” in the contest indicated that he had not yet entirely refined his genre-mixing skills.
Not done with TV competitions, JJ went on the Austrian show “Starmania,” whose alumni include Thomas Neuwirth, who’s also known as Conchita Wurst and won Eurovision in 2014 with “Rise Like a Phoenix.” And the two singers teamed up for a mashup of their winning numbers last year.
As is traditional at Eurovision, the previous year’s champion is prominently featured in the current festivities, and so at tonight final JJ is performing “Queen of the Night,” a song that incorporates different styles. The title refers to a character from “The Magic Flute,” which should bring back memories for the singer, as JJappeared in a production of that Mozart masterpiece at the Vienna State Opera a mere months before heading to Eurovision last year.
Coincidentally — or is it? — the Nemo song “The Code,” which won Eurovision for Switzerland in 2024, combined pop, drum-and-bass and opera, and at one point dropped what sounded like a quick reference to an aria sung by … the Queen of the Night.
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