15 years ago, Stefan Raab, the slightly megalomaniacal entertainer, and Lena Meyer-Landrut, the cheeky young singer from Hanover, created one of the most unusual success stories on TV: together they won the Eurovision Song Contest and celebrated a triumph that has remained unmatched to this day.
However, the success almost brought Lena Meyer-Landrut to her knees. Today she speaks openly about how strenuous her time at the ESC really was – and how she feels about her former mentor Stefan Raab today.
Lena at the ESC 2010: Raab’s masterpiece Stefan Raab is known for his crazy ideas, but one thing cannot be denied: he turns everything he touches into gold. One of these glorious ideas was to send Lena Meyer-Landrut to the Eurovision Song Contest. The year is 2010, when Raab discovered the then 18-year-old Hanoverian on TV. Right off the bat, Stefan and Lena seemed like an unstoppable dream team: both loved clowning around and entertaining the audience. When the appropriate catchy tune was born with “Satellite”, nothing stood in the way of taking part in the ESC.
Lena’s performance hit like a bomb: the performance scored dream points and finally brought victory back to Germany after almost 30 years. (In 1982, Nicole won with “A Little Peace.”) Lena became a superstar overnight Raab was celebrated for one of the greatest successes of his career. At this year’s ESC he can prove whether the old entertainer still has what it takes to be a hitmaker. However, the ARD has imposed a strict condition on him.
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Lena Meyer-Landrut about Stefan Raab: “Constantly feeling burnout”
Jump to 2024: Lena Meyer-Landrut (33) is an experienced woman who can look back on 15 years in show business. However, the singer became famous so young that she had little opportunity to process her lightning success at the time. Her first tour after the ESC victory is said to have thrown her off track in particular. Meyer-Landrut reveals on Apple Music:
Actually, it was unfair to put me on stage. It definitely got to me and stays with me to this day, I can’t get rid of it.
In the RND interview, Lena Meyer-Landrut was asked whether she felt overwhelmed as an 18-year-old in the situation with Stefan Raab. Lena’s answer is clear: “Yes definitely.” The sudden media hype was simply too much for the very young student. In the meantime, she has learned to take care of herself, as she revealed to RPR1:
This healthy egoism, which you have to learn to live by, ensures that you simply have more strength and more power doesn’t always have the feeling of burnout hovering over you.
Lena emphasizes to RND that she does not blame Stefan Raab: “This is not intended to be a blame game. […] I certainly signaled back then that everything was okay.” However, she later realized that this turbulent time was said to have had a negative impact on her psyche.
Today Lena Meyer-Landrut and Stefan Raab are not friends; fleeting encounters are purely professional in nature: “We see each other in Cologne every now and then at productions. But not privately.”
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