After an embarrassing 24-hour delay caused by a malfunctioning voting app, Ukraine announced that alyona alyona & Jerry Heil won the Ukrainian national final, Vidbir, with their song “Teresa & Maria.” The duo will be performing 5th in the first semifinal.

Overall, Vidbir 2024 presented lots of quality songs ranging from easy listening to certified bops. (You can click here to listen to our Spotify playlist.) Our favorite to win was the runner up, Melovin’s “Dreamer.” (Melovin previously represented Ukraine in Eurovision 2018 with “Under the Ladder.”) We would also like to give a shout out to NAZAR’s “Slavic English” for being “wonderful, beautiful, amazing, love” ❤️ .

“Teresa & Maria” definitely gets stuck in our heads (in a good way). It combines soaring operatic pop with rap, and cements the classic Ukrainian rap break trope. One of the first sweeping ballads of the year, this song set the bar that we have measured all other similar entries against (such as Albania, Denmark, Portugal, Poland, Serbia, and Slovenia), most of which fell short.

While alyona alyona & Jerry Heil can absolutely sing, rap, and have great chemistry on stage, we hope they will elevate their Eurovision performance beyond even their national final. We trust they will be able to continue Ukraine’s 100% qualification streak since semifinals were introduced 20 years ago.