The Russian singer who participated in this year’s 60th Eurovision Song Contest spent the first years of her life in Greece. Polina Gagarina’s “A Million Voices” was one of the competition’s big favorites and was eventually voted as the second best song.
Gagarina is a Russian actress, singer and composer. She was born in Russia but grew up in Athens, where she went to school for a few years. The singer speaks Greek very well.
When her father passed away in 1993, her mother – a ballerina who used to work for a dance school in Athens – decided that the family had to return to Russia. However, Gagarina decided to go back to Greece and live in Athens. After a while, her grandmother convinced her to move to the Russian city of Saratov.
Gagarina had received fierce conservative criticism in social media after she posted an Instagram video of her kissing Conchita, the Austrian singer who won last year’s Eurovision Contest. The strongest reaction came from St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Deputy Vitaly Milonov who said: “No one has the right to call this woman, this performer, a representative of Russia.”
Around 200 million people watched the 60th Eurovision contest, while another 10,000 attended the event and 25,000 gathered outside the Vienna city hall.
The event hosts announced that yesterday’s competition was registered in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest annual television music contest.
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