Exclusive: A behind-the-scenes look at Loreen’s history-making Eurovision win

Saturday evening (or in the wee hours of Sunday morning, rather), the world was watching as Loreen made history. A decade after snatching the Eurovision win for ‘Euphoria’, the Swedish superstar claimed a victory for ‘Tattoo’, making her the second artist to bank two wins (shout out to Ireland’s Johnny Logan) and the first woman to do so. The feeling when her name was called? “Oh god – it was shock,” she says. “I didn’t have any expectations, honestly. Sitting there I was just like, ‘Can we get this over with?’ And once they gave me the points, it was a total shock.”

Going into the evening with a lack of expectations – despite being favoured to win – is a well-honed strategy. “I’m very, very disciplined that way,” she says. “For me, it’s about being authentic in your performance and the moment you start thinking about winning or losing, it distracts you from what you’re actually there to do.” And what Loreen is there to do is illicit a feeling from her 160-million person audience. It’s a feeling brought about through not only a stellar and impossibly present performance (with soul-stirring vocals), but also meticulous staging and costuming. With ‘Tattoo’, that feeling is quite simply “love”.

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Fittingly for a Swede, Loreen plucked the inspiration for her performance from nature. “There’s the sand, there’s the mist, there’s the smoke, there’s the wind, the sky, my nails are made out of stone,” she says. “It’s abstract but it’s there, as a reminder of what really matters.” Simultaneously, nods to her Moroccan heritage exist in the henna tattoo (painstakingly applied the night before the performance), the visual reference to desert storms, the movement and “the part before the last chorus”. She mimics the melody over the phone and a chill creeps down my spine.

Loreen approached the months leading up to Eurovision with the discipline of an athlete in training, working out three times a day, five days a week (cardio in the morning, strength mid-day and more cardio or yoga in the evening). When she first said yes to participating, her physical condition was “OK”, but “not good enough for this performance”, namely the combination of singing and movement. “I went hard core,” she says. “But you have to know what you’re doing. You have to eat a certain way, you have to exercise a certain way, you have to be very precise with sleeping.”

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While she usually wakes up at 6AM, on the morning of the finals, Loreen “slept in” until 8.30 (“I knew it was going to be a long day”). The getting ready process at the arena takes somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours (that’s not including the hours it takes to apply the henna the night before or the two hours it takes to remove those aforementioned nails, designed by Danielle Lundgren). The sand-hued stage outfit of form-hugging jersey and leather, created by Swedish designer Fadi el Khoury, was, in part, inspired by the film Dune.

It’s Loreen’s moment, and she’s ready to capture it. In the coming weeks she’ll be working on music. Perhaps there’s more shows on the horizon. As she puts it: “I think this is going to be a new era for me.”

Below, all the exclusive behind-the-scenes images of Loreen's 2023 Eurovision preparation, performance and historic win, as captured by Charli Ljung.