"Last Dance" is a song recorded by Greek-Dutch singer

Stefania ''Stefania'' is a genus of frogs in the family Hemiphractidae. They are native to the highlands of the Guiana Shield in southern Venezuela, Guyana, and adjacent far northern Brazil. Most are restricted to the tepui highlands, but '' S. evansi'' ...

, digitally released on 10 March 2021. It was written by

Dimitris Kontopoulos Dimitris Kontopoulos (Greek: Δημήτρης Κοντόπουλος born November 9, 1971, in Athens, Greece) is a Greek music composer. Personal life Dimitris Kontopoulos was born in Athens, Greece on November 9, 1971. After graduating from the ...

, songwriting team Arcade and

Sharon Vaughn Mary Sharon Vaughn (born May 2, 1947) is an American musician, songwriter and producer who was previously based in Sweden. She has written hits for artists such as Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Reba McEntire, The Oak Ridge Boys, George Jones, K ...

. The song represented Greece in the

Eurovision Song Contest 2021 The Eurovision Song Contest 2021 was the 65th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Rotterdam, Netherlands, following the country's win at the with the song "Arcade" by Duncan Laurence. The Netherlands was set to host the , ...

. Stefania was once again selected as the country's representative by the Greek public broadcaster

Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation The Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation ( el, Ελληνική Ραδιοφωνία Τηλεόραση AE, Ellinikí Radiofonía Tileórasi SA) or ERT () is the state-owned public radio and television broadcaster of Greece. History Overview ERT b ...

(ERT), after the cancellation of the .

Background and composition

On 18 March 2020, the day of the 2020 contest's cancellation, ERT was one of the first four broadcasters (the others being the Netherlands'

AVROTROS AVROTROS () is a Dutch radio and television broadcaster that is part of the Dutch public broadcasting system. It was founded in 2014 as the result of a merger between the Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep (AVRO) and the Televisie Radio Omroep Stic ...

, Spain's

RTVE The Corporación de Radio y Televisión Española, S.A. (; ), known as Radiotelevisión Española or RTVE, is the state-owned public corporation that assumed in 2007 the indirect management of the Spanish public radio and television service know ...

and Ukraine's UA:PBC) to confirm their participation in the next edition and to announce their continued cooperation with their 2020 artist,

. "Last Dance" was written by

, songwriting team Arcade, consisting of Anastasios Rammos, Diveno, Gavriil Gavrilidis, Pavlos Manolis, Egion Parreniasi and Loukas Damianakos. and

. On 7 January 2021, "Last Dance" was announced as the title of selected song, with its release planned for 10 March. On March 10, 2021, the official video clip premiered through ERT's hybrid platform ''ERTFLIX'', and later was released on YouTube and the streaming media platforms.

Music video

The music video was filmed in

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

in February 2021 and was released at the same time as the premiere of the song, on 10 March 2020. Konstantinos Karydas, who was directed the official music video of "

Supergirl Supergirl is the name of several fictional superheroines appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The original, current, and most well known Supergirl is Kara Zor-El, the cousin of superhero Superman. The character made her fir ...

", was chosen again to direct this year's video. He revealed information about the style of the video clip, which will be shot in studios and outdoors, aesthetics from paintings, dream images and many effects. Also, he said that the video clip tells a fantastic and dreamy story, which presses on the song's message that everything in life is transient and that each end brings a new beginning. The official music video premiered on March 10, 2021 at 17:00

EET "Eet" is a song from Regina Spektor's fifth studio album, ''Far (album), Far''. It was released as the album's second official single in October 2009. In Europe it was released as a digital download on November 27, 2009. Music video A Viral vide ...

through ''ERTFLIX'', ERT's hybrid platform and through Stefania's official channel on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

at 22:00 EET. "Using elements from Greek mythology, such as

Pegasus Pegasus ( grc-gre, Πήγασος, Pḗgasos; la, Pegasus, Pegasos) is one of the best known creatures in Greek mythology. He is a winged divine stallion usually depicted as pure white in color. He was sired by Poseidon, in his role as hor ...

and

Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographic ...

, given in a dreamy, but at the same time modern way", the central message of the song is highlighted, which is the phrase "Every end is always a new beginning".

Eurovision Song Contest

Internal selection

On March 18, 2020, the

(ERT) announced Greek-Dutch singer

as the Greek representative for the

. Stefania was to represent Greece in the . On March 10, 2021, the song "Last Dance" was officially released.

In Rotterdam

The

took place at

Rotterdam Ahoy Rotterdam Ahoy (formerly known as Ahoy Rotterdam or simply as Ahoy) is a convention centre and multi-purpose indoor arena located in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Opened originally in 1950, the current complex consists of three main venues: a fairs an ...

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...

, the Netherlands, and consisted of two semi-finals held on 18 and 20 May, and the grand final on 22 May 2021. According to the Eurovision rules, each participating country, except the host country and the " Big Five", consisting of , , , and the , are required to qualify from one of two semi-finals in order to compete in the final; the top ten countries from each semi-final progress to the grand final. The

European Broadcasting Union The European Broadcasting Union (EBU; french: Union européenne de radio-télévision, links=no, UER) is an alliance of Public broadcasting, public service media organisations whose countries are within the European Broadcasting Area or who ar ...

(EBU) split up the competing countries into six different pots based on voting patterns from previous contests, with countries with favourable voting histories put into the same pot. For the 2021 contest, the semi-final allocation draw held for 2020, which was held on 28 January 2020, was used. Greece was placed into the second semi-final, which was held on 20 May 2021, and performed in the first half of the show. After placing fifth in the semi-final, the song advanced to the Grand Final where it finished joint tenth with 170 points. Fokas Evangelinos was announced as the artistic director for the entry, responsible for the country's stage performance. Stefania was joined on stage by four dancers: George Papadopoulos (stage director for the Greek entry at the 2014 Contest), Nikos Koukakis, Markos Giakoumoglou and Costas Pavlopoulos.

Credits and personnel

Credits adapted from

. ;Locations *Recorded at Vox Studios (Athens, Greece) *Mixed at Cinelab Studios (Moscow, Russia) *Mastered at Studio DMI (Las Vegas, Nevada, USA) Personnel *Lead vocals –

*Songwriting –

, Arcade,

Production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stati ...

– Dimitris Kontopoulos, Arcade Music * Mixing – Andrei Konoplev * Mastering –

Luca Pretolesi Luca Pretolesi is an Italian Grammy Award-nominated mixing engineer, music producer, musician, DJ, and educator. He has many records that made it to the top of the charts since 1990s when he started his techno project Digital Boy. Life At th ...

Recording A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, ...

– Aris Binis

Charts

Release history

Notes

References

{{Eurovision Song Contest 2021, state=collapsed 2021 singles 2021 songs English-language Greek songs Eurovision songs of 2021 Eurovision songs of Greece Songs written by Dimitris Kontopoulos Songs written by Sharon Vaughn Stefania Liberakakis songs Synthwave songs