John Lydon loses out in bid to represent Ireland at Eurovision

4 February, 2023

John Lydon

Former Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon has lost out in his bid to represent Ireland at Eurovision this year.

Lydon announced his bid to represent Ireland in the annual singing competition with his band Public Image Ltd., last month. They performed a new song, ‘Hawaii’, for the competition, which was dedicated to Lydon’s wife Nora who is living with Alzheimer’s disease.

However, Lydon lost out to Dublin’s four-piece band Wild Youth following a vote on Friday night. Their upbeat song ‘We Are One’ won the most votes after the combined results of a public phone-in, a national jury and an international jury ranked all six entrants. Each awarded Lydon six points for a total of 18, putting him in the middle of the table.

Wild Youth won 34 points, ahead of other entrants Adgy, Connolly, Leila Jane, and K Muni & ND.

Wild Youth’s singer, Conor O’Donohoe, said the band were overwhelmed with the result.

“We hope everyone can get behind the song and that we can do everyone in Ireland proud. We want to thank all of our families, they have supported us from day one.”

Ahead of the contest, Lydon revealed he was nervous about performing the song, which he hoped would raise awareness of Alzheimer’s disease. “I don’t know what I’m going to go through doing this today. I’m even shaking now thinking about it,” he admitted.

“It means the world to me, this is our last few years of coherence together. And I miss her like mad. I miss my missus, if you keep voting for me I’m going to miss her even more.”

He went on to say that he was still “terrified of mugging it up, getting it wrong, letting people down – mostly letting Nora down”.

Lydon said in 2020 that he had scrapped a planned Public Image Ltd album to care for Nora, whom he confirmed was living with Alzheimer’s back in 2018.

Eurovision 2023 will take place in Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena on Saturday, May 13.

The BBC announced earlier this week that the slogan for this year’s competition, which the UK is hosting on Ukraine’s behalf due to the ongoing war, will be “United By Music”.

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