The fan-favorite and the two time runner-up of Vidbir – Ukraine’s Eurovision selection, Tayanna has announced that she is withdrawing from this year’s edition of the Ukrainian selection!

Tayanna was set to come-back for the third time in a row, and try to win Ukraine’s ticket to the Eurovision Song Contest. After winning the jury votes in 2017 with “I Love You” and in 2018 with “Lelya” and coming second both times overall, Tayanna was announced as one of the participants for the 2019 edition as well. She wanted to take part as she felt that “Eurovision needs a song in Ukrainian language”. Last night however, Tayanna announced her withdrawal on her Instagram.

Friends, greetings! I have an important message for you. Yesterday evening I adopted a very difficult but conscious decision. I will no longer participate in the national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest. I believe that it will be better for everyone. I hope you treat it with respect and appreciation.

Sometimes the universe does not give you something to something, not because you do not deserve it, but because you deserve something else. To confirm this, I feel that right now I have to make this choice.
I’m sure there will be artists who did not get to the list of participants, but who need a ticket to Israel more than I do.

And over time, I still realized that the main competition in the life of a creative person is a competition with myself. It is possible to win a victory in it only under one condition – to be sincere and to have the power to make difficult decisions.

I respect and love our whole team that believes in me and all this time did everything to achieve this ambitious goal. But I say no. Enough.

At the moment, I’m immersed in what really captures me – recording a new album and preparing for a solo concert.

I am grateful to all for support all this time. This is very important to me and it inspires me.

I beat everyone with my music!

Your Tayanna

Whether the competition will now remain with 15 participants, or whether a replacement for Tayanna will be announced is yet to be seen.