Eurovision song contest 2017: The winner Portuguese Salvador Sobral - Amar Pelos Dois (Portugal)

From Portugal Euro Song Contest winner Amar Pelos Dois

Watched by more than 200 million people around the world Salvador Sobral - Amar Pelos Dois (Portugal) Eurovision 2017 - (Official Music Video)

It  took 53 years for Portugal to win the Eurovision Song Contest, and few could have predicted that it would be with an act as stripped-down and melancholic as this.

Maybe this performance by the Portuguese artist Salvador Sobral highlights the difference in European taste, when it comes to  popular music, in contrast to today's US hip-hop music culture.

Among the glossy trappings of 2017 club-tinged pop that were adopted by other favorites, Italy’s Francesco Gabbani and Bulgaria’s Justin Bieber 2.0 Kristian Kostov, Amar Pelos Dois cast a distinctly vintage shadow over the competition. 

While Sobral may have competed on the Portuguese version of Pop Idol seven years ago, he has made his name since by performing on smaller stages. And Amar Pelos Dois mined this; it could have been emerging from the doorway of a dimly lit bar in Lisbon’s Bairro Alto, not hushing the thousands of flag-bearers filling an arena in Ukraine.

EU-Digest