Nemo is reflecting on last year's Eurovision Song Contest a year later

A year has passed since Nemo made history at the Eurovision Song Contest – not just as Switzerland’s first winner since Céline Dion in 1988 (and the first to actually be Swiss since the inaugural broadcast in 1956), but also the first non-binary champion in the history of the competition.

Nemo’s competing song, The Code, saw them singing directly about their personal journey of self-acceptance, and how they saw “between the 0s and 1s” to ultimately “find paradise” and “break the code” by choosing to embrace living beyond boundaries.

With their Eurovision performance, the Swiss musician also provided the contest with another of its iconic visuals, belting out their operatic falsetto high notes atop an enormous spinning platform, while sporting a ruffled tulle jacket, skirt and trainers.

All of this proved to be a winning combination for Nemo – not that they realised it at the time.

“I didn’t go into Eurovision thinking I would win it,” they admit to HuffPost UK. “I mean, my goal was to win it. Doing Eurovision, obviously, I think you have to have a certain drive for it, why else would you be here? But I wasn’t expecting it. It’s such a huge event, you don’t know what will happen.”

Nemo shares: “The thing that was both amazing and terrifying was that whole spinning top thing. I fell one time in the rehearsals – the whole spinning top tipped over – and I was like, ‘oh my god, that can just happen any time’.”

Nemo performing during the 2024 Eurovision final

However, it wasn’t just the various moving parts of Nemo’s performance that made the lead-up to the Eurovision final both “a bit terrifying, but also very exciting”.

Last year’s contest undoubtedly became the most fraught and divisive in Eurovision history, despite its “United By Music” slogan.

Controversy arose early on when it emerged that Israel would be competing as usual, despite the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, which led to calls for a boycott from some critics.

This chaos only became exacerbated as the final approached, with further backlash ensuing when one act was disqualified a day before the live broadcast, and it later transpired that many complaints (including from Nemo) had been made to Eurovision’s organisers, the European Broadcasting Union, over the conduct of certain delegations in the last stretch of the contest.

“I was never as overwhelmed as I was at Eurovision, with everything that is thrown your way,” Nemo says a year on, revealing there are “so many factors” – both positive and negative – that “define” their experience in Malmö.

“You just find yourself in this massive thing that is way bigger than you, that you can’t really control. The best kind of image to describe it is a whirlwind. You’re just kind of being thrown into it, and you’re trying to float, and not be thrown out in a crazy direction.”

Nemo made Eurovision history when they won the contest in 2024 – in what proved to be a difficult year for the contest

Because of last year’s contestants’ tumultuous time in Malmö, Nemo wound up growing “so much closer” with a handful of their fellow competitors (some of whom they were recently reunited with on the set of their Eurostar music video) than they’d anticipated.

“I felt so connected to the friends that I’ve made there, and I still do,” they said. “It’s crazy to me how people that don’t know each other a few months before can feel like [that]. I still feel like I have really deep bonds with some of the contestants from last year, just because of that shared experience.

“And it’s not an experience you can explain or try to put into words for other people........

© HuffPost