Photo credit: Theodor Andrei/ TVR
After winning Selecția Națională, the Romanian public chose Theodor Andrei as their representative for Romania this year. I’ll be having more of an in-depth look at his career up to now and finding out a little more about one of the youngest contestants in this year’s Eurovision.
Who Is Theodor Andrei?
Theodor Andrei is a singer, composer, and actor. He first started singing at a young age, and it’s always been a passion for him to be a singer and performer. He has taken part in numerous competitions locally as well as internationally and has won awards for his talent. Like many other singers across the continent, Eurovision has always been a childhood dream of his and he used to watch the contest every year with his family hoping that one day he’d have his chance to represent Romania.
The Voice Kids Romania
One of the first major competitions that he took part in was The Voice Kids Romania back in 2017. He performed ‘I Hate Myself For Loving You’ by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, where he received one turn from his eventual coach Marius Moga. After passing the auditions, he made it through the battle round and qualified for the semi-finals. He didn’t make it to the final but being in the top 9 is a major achievement for someone his age.
After the show, he began to release some of his own material to various music platforms with his debut single ‘Young and Sweet’ being released in 2017 and he released subsequent songs in Romanian in the coming years.
X Factor Romania
Fast forward to 2020 and Theodor Andrei, when he was 15 auditioned for The X Factor where he sung ‘If I Can Dream’ by Elvis Presley, but this time he recieved all 4 yesses from judges and therefore advanced automatically to the next round. Celeb Judge Loredana became his mentor for the remainder of the competition. His next hurdle was Bootcamp and the 3 Chair Challenge. Proving further that he’s a big Eurovision fan, he decided to sing the Norwegian entry from 2018 ‘That’s How You Write A Song’ by Alexander Rybak. He put on a good vocal and added dancing and ad-libs to the song which the crowd liked, and although he was given the first chair, he was eventually swapped out by another singer and was eliminated from the competition.
YouTube and First Album
Despite another reality show elimination, Theodor began to upload even more covers on his YouTube channel and continued to release his own original material. He mainly released songs in Romanian and they have since had thousands of views on YouTube.
In October 2022, he released his first album entitled ‘FRAGIL’ under Selective Studio. One of the songs that was on the album was a song called ‘D.G.T’ featuring Luca Udățeanu. This would then be reworked as he wanted to take this particular song into a certain competition.
Selecția Națională
2023 wasn’t the first time Theodor had tried to take part in the Romanian national final Selecția Națională. According to an interview with ESCBubble, he said that he’d tried to represent Romania for three years but this was the first year where he made the final. In that same interview, he talked about the moment that he found out he made the final 12.
In the morning when I received the news, all my friends knew that we had to find out the results and kept telling me that it would be fine. We were playing Activity – a board game – and one of my friends says: “The results from the National Selection have been published!” Everyone was excited and curious and I took the phone from his hand and when I saw my name on the list of qualified ones I said “I entered the Final, I can’t believe it!” and we all started screaming for happiness and holding each other. It was like a movie scene. It is one of the most beautiful memories of my life. However, I knew that it was a lot of work for such an event, so I slowly started to think about how I would design my moment in the final.
Theodor Andrei explains the moment he found out he made the final 12 in his ESCBubble interview
D.G.T is short for the Romanian word ‘Degete’ which means fingers in English. He co-wrote the song with Mikail Jahed, Luca de Mezzo and Luca Udățeanu but for the National Final, he rewrote some lyrics in English so the song could appeal to more people outside Romania.
Although he wasn’t the hot favourite in Romania, on the night his performance of ‘D.G.T’ won the support of the Romanian public – joined by four dancers, he performed the song with some minor choreography and some costume reveals reminiscent of last year’s entrant WRS during his shirt reveal during the grand final performance of ‘Llamame’.
It was a successful night for Theodor as he won the national final with over 5,000 votes – meaning his childhood dream has come true, and he will go on to represent Romania in Liverpool and hope to continue their qualifying streak.
He will be performing in the first half of the second semi-final on Thursday 11th May. We wish him and the Romanian delegation the best of luck in Eurovision!
What do you think of his song? Let us know in the comments!
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