Eurovision 2023: Austria spokesperson demands ‘equal pay for women’

The Eurovision 2023 spokesperson for Austria emphasised the importance of equal pay for women when giving their 12 points. The sentiment matched the meaning behind Austria’s entrant Who the Hell is Edgar?

Austria gave their their 12 points to Italy following the jury vote. When announcing their votes at the Eurovision final, Philipp Hansa said: “Equal pay for women would be the beautiful thing of them all.”

Sweden is the current favourite to win with Loreen’s track Tattoo capturing the hearts of many. Italy is currently second on the leaderboard at the time of writing.

Austria’s track, Edgar Allan Poe, performed by Teya and Salena, talks about the challenges of the modern music industry. Teye and Salena have spoken about how the track speaks about their challenges specifically as women writers.

The satirical track sends a message about Teya and Salena’s experiences as female songwriters in an industry that “doesn’t give women enough credit for their hard work and expertise”, the Eurovision website reads. On the surface, the song leans on ghost imagery and suggests the writer is being possessed by the ghost of Edgar.

However, the song has a deeper meaning about how ghostwriters are often not credited with their work and the difficulties faced by minorities in the music industry. The lyrics “zero dot zero three” references the Spotify $0.003 royalty rate artists receive per track listen.

Teya said: “It’s just so heartwarming to see people care about the message. That’s not what we expected at all. People that are not in the industry have never even heard about how much you get from Spotify. So the fact that people actually started analysing it has been incredible. We just hope that we are leaving, like, a small impact."