Conan Osíris: From Japan and Egypt to Portugal and Tel Aviv

Conan Osíris is officialy the new portuguese national star, having won Festival da Canção last weekend. Also, Portugal is already one of the favorite countries to win the Eurovision Song Contest, next May, in Tel-Aviv, and is currently seventh in the betting odds!

But, afterall, who is this strange guy that is conquering Europe and making people rethink their musical references? Was he already a famous singer in Portugal before Festival has started? And what does he think about this huge hype that is growing around him?

Last Saturday evening, Festival da Canção 2019 took place in Portimão Arena, 300 km far from Lisbon, with the aim of  choosing the next Portuguese representative for the Eurovision, two years after Salvador Sobral’s historical victory and almost 12 months after Portugal had hosted Eurovision Song Contest for the first time ever. The expectations were very high among the entire country and all eurofans around Europe, mainly because of Conan Osíris…but we had to wait a three-hour show to discover if he would really be the chosen one…

Calema, Mariana Bragada, Matay, Surma, NBC, Madrepaz, Conan Osíris and Ana Cláudia…this was the running order for these eight contestants…and there were a lot of fans supporting each one of them inside the arena. However, when Conan Osíris’ name was announced at the beginning of the show, we all realized that he was definitely the people’s favorite.

During the show, it became clear. Conan Osíris and Matay…one of them would represent Portugal in Israel, on Eurovision. And also, both had also performed in the first semifinal, having Matay won it with 12 points from the juries and 10 points from the public, while Conan had finished second with 12 points from the public voting and 7 points from the juries. So, we definitely needed to wait for the jury votes to know if they had changed anything in their minds, in the last two weeks.

Thus, after two hours of broadcast, the voting began to be announced…with the 7 regional juries. And, guess what? Conan received the maximum score, 12 points, in 6 of them and Matay finished the jury voting in…fourth place, after Conan, NBC and Surma. But it was still missing the public votes and, when it was announced, the obvious fact was confirmed…Matay received 10 points and Conan Osíris got the 12 points, receiving a total of 24 points (2 more than Salvador Sobral, who won Festival da Canção 2017 with 22 points!).

So, the big question now is…who is Conan Osíris?

Well, in fact, his name is Tiago Miranda, he’s 30 years old and his artistic name is inspired in the japanese TV series “Future Conan Boy” from Hayao Miyazaki, and in the Egyptian culture, where Osíris is the God of the afterlife, the underworld and rebirth.

Before Festival da Canção, Conan Osíris had already released three albums: Silk (2014), Música Normal (2016) and Adoro Bolos (2017), but only after releasing the last one, which was considered one of the best Portuguse albums of the year, he began becoming famous in the music industry, giving his first live concert ever last year, on March 2nd, exactly one year before Festival da Canção 2019’s Grand Final.

Since that moment, Conan started to perform in many ‘Summer Festivals’ and some TV shows, and not only his music began to be a topic of discussion but also his eccentricity and his artistic persona, dividing opinions in everyone who was making contact with him. Inclusively, in an interview that Filomena Cautela, one of last year’s Eurovision hosts, gave before Eurovision, she said that “one of the people who could give another victory to Portugal in Eurovision, in a short period of time, would be…Conan Osíris”.

The similarities between Conan Osíris and Salvador are many: they both were born the same year, they know very little about what happened before in Festival da Canção and in Eurovision, both express their opinion…in a very spontaneous way, and their performances mark the difference.

Some minutes after winning Festival da Canção, Conan Osíris was really tired and just said he “needed to rest and sleep a lot, now”, before start thinking his performance on Eurovision. However, the entire country seems to be already prepared to the international contest and very excited about how Europe will react to Conan’s act in Israel.