Stefania Liberakakis

Stefania Liberakakis was born on 17 December 2002 in Utrecht, in the Netherlands, to Greek parents, and grew up there. She began singing at around eight. At about ten she persuaded her parents to let her apply for the Dutch talent show The Voice Kids, where she got through the auditions and reached the battle rounds. She then sang for two years in Kinderen voor Kinderen, a well-known Dutch children’s choir.

In 2016 she was chosen as a member of the girl group Kisses, which represented the Netherlands at Junior Eurovision in Valletta, Malta. Their song Kisses and Dancin’ came eighth out of seventeen with 174 points. From 2018 she also worked as an actress, playing Fenna in the Dutch mockumentary series Brugklas, and she took her first leading film role in Misfit: The Switch in 2022. She presented the children’s chart programme Kids Top 20 and co-hosted the Junior Songfestival, the Dutch selection for Junior Eurovision.

Her first appearance on a Greek stage came at the MAD Video Music Awards in 2019, where she sang Con Calma with Konnie Metaxa and Ilenia Williams. The Greek public broadcaster ERT then chose her for Eurovision 2020, but the contest was cancelled because of COVID-19. ERT selected her again for 2021. In the final in Rotterdam on 22 May 2021 she finished tenth with 170 points, Greece’s first top-ten result since 2013.

Stefania’s recorded work is mostly English-language pop, with some songs in Dutch. Her first solo single, Stupid Reasons, appeared in 2018, written by Joachim Vermeulen Windsant and Maarten ten Hove. Wonder, I’m Sorry (Whoops!) and Turn Around followed in 2019, and in 2020 she released Friday in English and Swipe in Dutch. Her screen roles, from Brugklas to Misfit: The Switch, run alongside the music.

Both of her Eurovision songs for Greece came from the same team: composer Dimitris Kontopoulos, the production group ARCADE and lyricist Sharon Vaughn. For 2020 she recorded demos of four songs, and in her own words SUPERG!RL «was number one». Last Dance, released in March 2021, is an English-language song with a 1980s-inspired sound. Fokas Evangelinos directed its staging in Rotterdam, combining dancers, lighting and visual effects, and the Greek designer Vrettos Vrettakos created her crystal-covered outfit.

These songs are not Greek listening practice, because their lyrics are in English. The Greek material lies around them. In ERT’s 2020 Q Sessions with Kontopoulos she also sang duets with Sakis Rouvas and Kalomira, and before the 2021 contest Greek newspapers printed her answers in Greek about nerves, the cancelled year and the support of Greeks abroad. Her career shows how a performer can represent a country while singing in a third language.

Stefania belongs to a generation of performers whose Greek identity is lived across borders. In a 2021 interview with in.gr she said that, born and raised in the Netherlands, she too was «μια Ελληνίδα της ομογένειας» (a Greek of the diaspora), and she asked Greeks abroad to stand by the Greek delegation. That sentence, printed on this page, is your material. Read it aloud and underline γεννήθηκα, μεγάλωσα and ομογένεια (I was born, I grew up, diaspora). Then write two sentences of your own in Greek: which languages you speak, and in which language a song you like is sung. For example: Μιλάω ολλανδικά και ελληνικά, αλλά το τραγούδι είναι στα αγγλικά (I speak Dutch and Greek, but the song is in English). This is a learner’s practice sentence, not a quotation.

• Her Rotterdam outfit, by the Greek designer Vrettos Vrettakos, carried at least 200,000 Swarovski crystals, according to Greek reports.
• In the 2021 final the juries of Cyprus and France each gave Greece 12 points.
• After the 2020 cancellation she waited about a year and a half for her Eurovision stage, and told To Vima simply: «Στενοχωρήθηκα πολύ» (I was very upset).
• She was 18 when she sang for Greece in Rotterdam, five years after representing the Netherlands at Junior Eurovision.