Katerine Duska

Katerine Duska was born and raised in Montreal before moving to Greece as a teenager. She studied classical guitar and encountered a broad range of music, from classical repertoire to pop, soul and rhythm and blues. Athens became the setting for her professional development. While studying law, she began pursuing her own songs more seriously and eventually left those studies to concentrate on music. In a Greek radio interview in 2019, she identified Greece as the place where she became a professional.

Online recordings helped introduce her work to Greek audiences in 2013. Her own One in a Million appeared alongside a cover of Arctic Monkeys’ Do I Wanna Know?, bringing original songwriting and interpretation together from the beginning. The debut album Embodiment followed in 2015 through Minos EMI. Concert appearances took her to Greek venues including the Athens Concert Hall and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, as well as stages elsewhere in Europe. In 2019 she represented Greece at Eurovision in Tel Aviv with Better Love, reaching the final. Her subsequent releases included Call Me Nyx in 2020 and the Melancholia bonus-edition EP in 2025, continuing a catalogue that moves between individual songs and larger recording projects.

Embodiment established Duska as a songwriter as well as a singer. Its English title suggests giving a feeling or idea a concrete form. The 2017 EP Embodiment Revisits returned to that material with alternative recordings of Fire Away, Slow and Somebody. It also included Από μέσα πεθαμένος (Dead Inside), a song by Attik. The Greek Youth Symphony Orchestra’s artist biography identifies this interpretation as her first recorded song in Greek. Another Greek recording, Θα περάσουν οι μέρες (The Days Will Pass), appeared on Stathis Drogosis’s multi-artist project 18+ in 2018.

Better Love, the 2019 Eurovision entry, is in English. The EBU credits its music to David Sneddon, Duska, Leon of Athens and Phil Cook, and its lyrics to Sneddon and Duska. Greece finished twenty-first in the final. Later work includes the 2020 single Call Me Nyx and the 2025 EP Melancholia (Bonus Edition). Her recordings therefore offer several points of entry: her own English songwriting, new versions of earlier material and Greek interpretations of other composers. Listening to the Attik recording brings attention to how a singer presents an existing song; reading her Greek interviews adds her spoken account of artistic choices and professional work.

Duska’s career shows how Greek popular culture also develops through English-language songwriting and international collaboration. Her Greek interpretations and interviews provide a distinct route into the language. Start with Από μέσα πεθαμένος (Dead Inside) on Embodiment Revisits and listen to a short passage, concentrating on the voice and melody. Then use this page’s adapted Greek to give your own reason for choosing a song: Διάλεξα αυτό το τραγούδι γιατί μου αρέσει η φωνή (I chose this song because I like the voice). Ask a partner for a different reason and compare your choices. This original practice sentence expresses a learner’s preference; it is separate from the song’s lyrics.

• She studied classical guitar before developing her songwriting career.
• Embodiment Revisits includes a Greek song by Attik.
• She records Greek interpretations alongside English-language songs.
• Better Love reached the Eurovision 2019 final.