Loreen

Loreen, officially Lorine Talhaoui, is a Swedish singer. She was born in Åkersberga in 1983 as a daughter of Moroccon parents. 

Loreen rose to fame for her participation in Idol in 2004. With her sister reporting her without her knowledge, she quickly found herself in this unplanned context for her, but she accepted the challenge. She finished in fourth place in the competition and was thus the second last to be eliminated before the final. After Idol, she released the single “The Snake” together with the group Rob’n’Raz in 2005.

In 2005, she started working in television, as a host for the program Lyssna på TV400. She later started working as feature producer, with editing, reality director etc. for several shows on TV3, TV4 and SVT. As a voice actor, she also did the voice of “Sleeping Beauty” in the Swedish dubbing of the film Shrek the Third from 2007 and the voice of “Smurf” in the film The Smurfs in 2011.

In the same year, Loreen participated in Melodifestivalen, the national final for the Eurovision Song Contest, with the song “My Heart is Refusing Me”. She reached the semifinal Andra Chansen (2nd chance) with the song, but the adventure ended there for her. Although she did not make it all the way to the final, the song became a top-10 hit in the Swedish charts.

After the success in Melodifestivalen, she released a new single on 12 September 2011 entitled “Sober”. At Gaygala on February 6, 2012, Loreen won the Swedish song of the year award for the single “My Heart is Refusing Me”.

Loreen competed again in Melodifestivalen 2012 with the song “Euphoria”. She reached the final and managed to win it and thus represent Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest 2012.

An hour before the final, the Marcel Bezençon Award was handed out and Sweden won two of the three prizes. Loreen received The Artistic Award, as voted by the respective country’s commentators, and the authors of “Euphoria” received The Composer Award, as voted by all the submissions’ composers.

Loreen won the Eurovision Song Contest itself with a total of 372 points.

“Euphoria” reached the number 1 spot  in 16 countries, number two in 8 countries and number three in 2, on charts around Europe. In Australia, the song reached number four on the ARIA Dance Chart. The song has also sold platinum in Denmark, Finland, Spain and Austria. In Switzerland it sold 2 times platinum, in Norway 8 times platinum, in Belgium and Italy gold and in Germany 3 times gold. On Itunes, the song also topped 21 countries around Europe in 2012. In Sweden, Euphoria sold 9 times platinum. It spent 43 weeks on the Swedish top list, of which 12 weeks in first place. Holding this record, “Euphoria” can be considered one of the biggest Eurovision hits ever.

With her commitment to human rights, Loreen visited human rights groups in Baku on several occasions to talk about their situation and their views on the dictatorship in the country, something that was criticized by the government of Azerbaijan.

After the internationally recognized victory in the Eurovision Song Contest, she has made numerous appearances in various festivals and television programs in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.

Loreen’s debut album “Heal”, with Loreen also as a contributing songwriter, was released on October 24, 2012. Prior to that, the single “Crying out your name” was released exclusively on Spotify. She toured during the summer of 2012 and released a music video for “Euphoria” on July 5, 2012. 

On June 21, 2012, Loreen participated in the MTV World Stage at Avenyn in Gothenburg. This performance was later nominated as Concert of the Year (in Sweden) at Rockbjörnen. Loreen was nominated by as one of the five candidates in the categories Swedish Female Live Artist of the Year and for Swedish Song of the Year with “Euphoria”. She won two of the three categories she was nominated for: Swedish Song of the Year (Euphoria) and Swedish Female Live Artist of the Year.

On July 15, 2012, she appeared for the first time in Allsång på Skansen, and on October 14 of the same year in the TV program Moraeus and more. Loreen was also nominated for the MTV EMA Worldwide Act as “Best Swedish Artist”.

In March 2013, she released a music video for the song “Heal” and also the song “Requiem Solution” together with Kleerup. She has also been an interlude in Melodifestivalen 2013 in the final, where she performed a new version of “Euphoria” together with students from Manilla School and Adolf Fredrik’s Music Classes. The same version was performed in the Eurovision Song Contest 2013, although then with music classes from Lund and two other schools. In the same year, “We got the power” became a hit for the singer.

Loreen also released several singles in 2015. The song “Paper light (higher)” reached the charts, the other two songs did not.

In 2017, Loreen returned to Melodifestivalen. She competed with the song “Statements” and reached Andra Chancen again. However, the song did not reach the final. Music critics and cultural personalities however saw the contribution as among the best ever in Melodifestivalen. 

After “Statements”, Loreen chose a new style, shaved off her long hair and recorded the album “Ride”, which was released in November 2017. The album featured a completely different style of music from the debut album. The music was more analog and organic, recorded with musicians from the indie rock band Amason. 

After receiving her large portrait in 2012 among a collection of other prominent Swedes at the Arlanda Airport “Stockholm Hall of Fame”, Loreen and “Euphoria” were also inducted into the Melodifestivalen Hall of Fame at its inauguration in 2020. She performed at Melodifestivalen’s special tribute cavalcade on 29 February 2020. In the fall of 2020, she participated in TV4’s Så mycket bättre, where she sang in Swedish, which led to a further project to release her own collection of songs in Swedish for the first time. In the winter of 2020, Loreen participated in På Spåret where she sang Toni Braxton’s “Un-Break My Heart”

On March 26, 2021, Loreen released the single “Sötvattentårar”, which she wrote together with Petter Tarland and Niclas Carson. Work on an upcoming album with Swedish lyrics continued.

Loreen debuted as an actor in 2021 in the film Vinterviken. She released the single “Neon Lights” in May 2022.  “Neon lights” could for six weeks starting on March 31, 2022 be exclusively heard during a test drive of the latest Lexus NX launch.

In the winter of 2022, Loreen returned to På Spåret where she sang Martha & The Vandella’s 60s hit “Nowhere to run”.

In 2023, Loreen returned to Melodifestivalen with the song “Tattoo”, wich was her fourth participation in the contest. She managed to win it with a landslide, and also won the Eurovision Song Contest. She is one of only two singers who ever won the Eurovision Song Contest twice. In October 2023 Loreen released another single “Is It Love?”.