{"id":56645,"date":"2026-07-14T17:41:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T17:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/dara-bangaranga-singer-says-she-almost-quit-eurovision\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T17:41:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T17:41:15","slug":"dara-bangaranga-singer-says-she-almost-quit-eurovision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/dara-bangaranga-singer-says-she-almost-quit-eurovision\/","title":{"rendered":"Dara: Bangaranga singer says she almost quit Eurovision"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Eurovision Song Contest winner Dara says she wanted to quit the competition twice before securing Bulgaria’s <\/b>first ever victory<\/b><\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n

The Bangaranga singer has told BBC Newsbeat she considered dropping out to protect her mental health.<\/p>\n

Dara says she was left “shaking in her bed” after being announced as her country’s act, fearing her newly diagnosed ADHD would be exacerbated by participating in Vienna.<\/p>\n

“That was how my body reacted,” the 27-year-old says, “and I was trying to calm myself down for three hours.” <\/p>\n

Dara won Eurovision by a record-breaking points margin in May, despite initially being little more than an outside favourite.<\/p>\n

As polished as it was quirky, the performance<\/a> was packed with personality and one of the sharpest hooks to ever sink its claws into the contest.<\/p>\n

But Bulgaria’s historic win may never have happened had its star followed through with her plan to quit.<\/p>\n

“The first time I said no because there were some things that I was not okay with in the contract,” says Dara.<\/p>\n

Already an established artist, problems started to stack up when she was announced as Bulgaria’s first Eurovision entry since 2022.<\/p>\n

“I immediately felt like I did something bad, that I’m not worthy,” she says. “I didn’t want to risk my mental health to such a degree that I couldn’t heal it.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Eurovision Song Contest winner Dara says she wanted to quit the competition twice before securing Bulgaria’s first ever victory. The Bangaranga singer has told BBC Newsbeat she considered dropping out to protect her mental health. Dara says she was left “shaking in her bed” after being announced as her country’s act, fearing her newly diagnosed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[279],"tags":[15451,15452,169,1133,1677],"class_list":["post-56645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsbeat","tag-bangaranga","tag-dara","tag-eurovision","tag-quit","tag-singer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56647,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56645\/revisions\/56647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}