Arcade

Album: Single release only (2019)
Charted: 29 30
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Songfacts®:

  • Duncan de Moor is a Dutch singer-songwriter who records under the name of Duncan Laurence. He began his music career in 2014 and that same year was a semifinalist in the reality singing competition The Voice of Holland.

    Laurence was selected in January 2019 as the Dutch entrant at the Eurovision Song Contest 2019. The song he was chosen to sing, "Arcade" was released on March 7, 2019.
  • The song, which Laurence wrote with Joel Sjöö and Wouter Hardy, uses a games arcade as a metaphor for the search for love.

    I spent all of the love I've saved
    We were always a losing game
    Small-town boy in a big arcade
    I got addicted to a losing game


    Laurence compares his attempts to find the love of his life to continually losing money playing the arcade games. He explained: "It's about the hope to reach something that seems unreachable."
  • "Arcade" won the 2019 Eurovision Contest with 498 points. Laurence's win marked the first time the Netherlands had won the contest since 1975 when the group Teach-In claimed victory with "Ding-a-Dong." Other Dutch winners were: "Net Als Toen" by Corry Brokken (1957), "Een Beetje" by Teddy Scholten (1959) and "De Troubadour" by Lenny Kuhr (in a four-way tie in 1969).
  • Duncan Laurence released a remixed version on November 27, 2020 featuring the American singer Fletcher. After meeting Fletcher through work in Los Angeles, Laurence was attracted to the "Undrunk" singer's voice and her forthright sense of self.

    "Her voice is something so special, but also the fact that she is standing up for queer people," he told Radio.com. "What I love is that she stands up for queer people by just being who she... that is everything I want to be too. I just want to stand up for who I am by just being who I am."
  • By the fall of 2020 the song had gone viral on TikTok, with Harry Potter fans using it to soundtrack scenes of Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger falling in love. As users continued to use it for other visuals such as make-up tutorials and food clips, "Arcade" returned to the charts worldwide.
  • Traditionally, the winner of the previous year's contest opens the following year's show. However, after performing as an opening act in the first semifinal of the Eurovision Song Contest 2021 in Rotterdam, Laurence tested positive for COVID-19. Pre-recorded footage of Laurence's performance was broadcast instead during the final.

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