Katerine Duska for Greece 2019

🇬🇷 Greece 2019 / “Better Love”

Photograph by Efi Gousi

Grand Final | 21st Place | 74 points

Semi Final 1 | 5th Place | 165 points | Qualified

Katerine Duska is an indie Greek-Canadian singer/songwriter who was chosen internally by ERT to represent Greece at Tel Aviv 2019 with the song “Better Love”. Through the selection process, ERT directors were swayed by Katerine’s unique voice and unanimously selected her. Though she is based in Athens, her debut album, Embodiment, released in 2016, is entirely in English, and she gained acclaimed indie status through her debut single One in a Million and her cover of the Arctic Monkeys’ “Do I Wanna Know”. Duska’s strong singing voice and non-Greek musical stylings were a strong deciding factor for ERT, as the past five years have been marked by poor placings, including two non-qualifications, with both traditionally Greek and standard pop songs.

“Better Love” is, as the title implies, a song about striving and working toward a seeking an uncompromising and unconditional love. The song is a journey past what we consider the accompanying pain that love must come with and looseness in which we proclaim love in order to seek out a real, true love. Duska invites the listener with her, to continue this everlasting burdensome journey knowing you’re not alone. She implores that this better love is one that lets us love the way we want, with whoever we want.

Duska was born and raised in Montreal, Canada, until moving to Athens, Greece, when she was a teenager. Though she studied law at the University of Athens, she was always interested in music and initially found her calling classical music before finding her way with more modern sounds. Her debut single, One in a Million, was recorded and released in 2013, garnering her acclaim among the Greek indie music community, with her debut album, Embodiment, being recorded two year later in 2015 and being released to critical acclaim in 2016. She wrote and composed the album herself and has been favorably compared to Amy Winehouse on several occasions.

Duska qualified to the final after coming in 5th place in the semi-final and ultimately ended up in 21st place due to having performed in the 13th position after winner Duncan Laurence and coming at the end of the first half.

Following her performance at Eurovision, Duska has continued to work on her next album. In November 2019 she and Leon of Athens, co-writer of “Better Love”, released “ANEMOΣ” (English: “Wind”), both artists’ first Greek-language single. In 2020 they again collaborated, with Duska being featured on “Communication”. She later released her next solo single, “Sanctuary”, in early 2020.

Watch “Better Love” below, and follow Katerine Duska on Instagram,  Twitter, and Facebook. Listen to her debut album, Embodiment, and her collaborative work with Leon of Athens on Spotify.