Do we like Loreen?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record on harm and a run of real humanitarian gestures, marked down because we found little from her on LGBTQ+ rights.
Loreen was born Lorine Talhaoui in 1983 to Moroccan Berber parents and grew up in Västerås, in central Sweden. Her first taste of fame was fourth place on Swedish Idol in 2004. After that she drifted into TV production before coming back to music in 2011.
Her comeback was spectacular: she won Melodifestivalen and then Eurovision 2012 with Euphoria, Sweden's first win since 1999. She won again in 2023 with Tattoo, only the second performer ever to take the trophy twice. That's a big career arc for someone who had stepped away from the stage for years.
The most telling story is from 2012. Before winning in Baku, she met local activists critical of Azerbaijan's human rights record, and Azerbaijani authorities reportedly accused her of making political statements. Months later she did something similar in Belarus: she played a government-backed festival, then met rights activists at the Swedish embassy and issued a statement backing political prisoners. Not every pop star takes that risk.
On the harm check, we found nothing nasty from her: no slide into conspiracy theories, no anti-trans or anti-migrant campaigning, no dodgy company. She has been a vocal critic of the boycott push over Israel in Eurovision, telling Reuters the contest should not punish people. Where you land on that depends on whether you read it as a call for unity or as sidestepping Gaza. We found no LGBTQ+-specific statement from her, which is a gap rather than a stain.
A 2024 report in The Sun, picked up by the Jerusalem Post and The Daily Beast, claimed she planned to leave the trophy on a plinth rather than hand it to Israel's Eden Golan if Israel won. It came from an anonymous source, not from Loreen, so treat it as tabloid territory. In 2025 US rapper Azealia Banks attacked the festival's choice to book Loreen after Banks herself was dropped; the report we read carries no response from Loreen.
The good stuff is quiet but real. Back in 2013 she was working with a Swedish organisation to build schools in Afghanistan, and she travelled there herself. She was also inducted into the Melodifestivalen Hall of Fame in 2020. It isn't a headline-grabbing charity list, but it's the sort of work you do when no cameras are begging for it.