Photo Gallery Our Star for Oslo
Lena Meyer-Landrut, an 18-year-old from Hanover, won a the national competition to represent Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest in Oslo, Norway, next Saturday.
Children at the school that Lena attends in Hanover watch the finals of the televised contest "Our Star For Oslo."
After winning "Our Star For Oslo," Meyer-Landrut made it into the German singles charts.
Her songs went to number one, two and four. Then she recorded her first album "My Cassette Player."
She's also apparently an average, down-to-earth German girl. When reporters ask Lena's friends about her, the answer is often: "She's a bit of a nutter."
One British journalist describes Meyer-Landrut's accent as her attempt to speak London street slang, a sort of hybrid of Jamaican and Cockney accents, the way her pop singer heroines Amy Winehouse and Adele do, which results in her "sounding like a Swedish speech therapist trying to imitate Ali G."
She sings in a strange English accent, she says strange things, and yet somehow all these funny little quirks have seen her chattering her way into her audience's heart.
Early in May Meyer-Landrut came under fire for what some in the media called "naked pictures" of her. She appeared in a docu-drama sitting in a pool with a young man. Apparently viewers get a glimpse of her chest.
Interviewed about the nude pictures, Meyer-Landrut simply told German reporters that it was just a role she played. "I was acting and that means it was not my privacy," she said. "Give me one reason why I should be upset about this. In our family we have always said: today's newspaper is used to wrap the fish in tomorrow."
Relaxed in a Hanover cafe: A not inconsiderable part of Meyer-Landrut's charm also comes from the fact that she prefers not to answer questions about her private life. "It's about the music," she replies in these instances.
On stage during the "Wanna Bet...?" show. Appearing alongside the world renowned stars the limits of Meyer-Landrut's talent were visible.
Germany's 1998 Eurovision contestant Guildo Horn. It is generally thought that the winning songs are most often in English.
The German winner of the 1982 Eurovision Song Contest. Germany has not won this prize since 17-year-old Nicole Hohloch won that year.
The Lithuanian group InCulto rehearse for the Eurovision Song Contest this week in Oslo, Norway. The final takes place on May 29.
The Swiss contender for the Eurovision title rehearsing this week.
Although the 17-year-old Eurovision candidate from Azerbaijan (pictured here rehearsing for the Eurovision finals) is also a contender, betting shops all over Europe are calling Meyer-Landrut the favorite to win the Eurovision Song Contest.
Search engine giant Google said this week it has tipped Meyer-Landrut to win Eurovision, based on forecast tools that analyze the users' searches. "We analyze the search results all across Europe and blend out the candidates in their own country," Google Germany spokesman Stefan Keuchel told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. "At the moment, Lena has attracted the greatest user interest of all candidates in the rest of Europe, too. And despite the fact that this year, for the first time, half the points will be awarded by a jury, you can still see a tendency emerging." He said the method had been tried and tested during the swine flu. "And we were correct about the last Song Contest," Keuchel said.
