Noa Kirel in a clip from the music video for “Unicorn.” Photo: YouTube screenshot

Israeli pop singer Noa Kirel revealed on Thursday the song that she will be performing when she represents Israel at the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest later this year in Liverpool in the United Kingdom.

The 21-year-old shared a clip from the music video for her new English-language song Unicorn and explained the message behind the track in an Instagram post.

“It’s sometime hard to keep up with this fast-paced world,” she wrote. “After the coronavirus and everything that is happening in Israel and all over the world, we are faced with so many challenges and for that we need a special power. The power of a unicorn.
The unicorn wins, thanks to his delicate power and his beauty. Maybe if we stop hating each other and believe in fairytales a little more, we will have a phenomenon phenomenon phenomenal world.”

Kirel sings in the chorus of the three-minute track: “I’m gonna stand here like a unicorn/Out here on my own/I got the power of a unicorn/Don’t you ever learn?/That I won’t look back/ I won’t look down/I’m going up/You better turn around.” The song also includes a few Hebrew language lines which translate to: “I’m not like everybody else/in front of the rest of the world … You can call me queen/I’m not trying to impress.”

Unicorn was co-written by Kirel, Yinon Yahel, May Sfadia and Doron Medalie — who co-wrote Israeli singer Netta Barzilai’s 2018 Eurovision-winning song Toy.

At an event in Eilat where Unicorn was first unveiled, Kirel further explained the decision to focus the song on a mythological creature. She said, “We chose a character that is also mythological but is very strong and stands with its horn outward to anyone coming — and I see our country as such a strong country. There’s something so innocent and pure about a unicorn, that in this period, we had to choose something that exists only in fairytales, in fantasies.”

Kirel was chosen by a panel, convened by Israel’s public broadcasting network Kan News, to represent Israel in the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest. She will perform Unicorn in the first Eurovision semifinal on May 9 and if she gets enough votes she will advance to the grand final on May 13.

Watch the music video for Unicorn below.