Michael Idato

Behold, the sun goddess has risen. Delta's performance on the Eurovision stage in Vienna this morning took her through layers of moon shadow, to an intersection of moon and sun at the heart of the eclipse, and finally – after a piano intermezzo played in fortissimo with a cheeky smile – into an explosion of gold that turned the Wiener Stadthalle arena into a shimmering ocean of fire. Designed by Dan Shipton and Ross Nicholson, the effect was extraordinary. Delta knew it, her confidence clearly on display. And the audience knew it, erupting into rapturous applause. Even in the media centre, backstage, a 1000-strong crowd of journalists from around the world applauded and cheered. Win or place, whatever happens now, this was truly a winning performance. #eurovision #eurovisionsongcontest #eurovision2026 #deltagoodrem @deltagoodrem @eurovision @sbs_australia @sbsondemand @sydneymorningherald @theageaustralia

“The sun goddess rises.” In just three breathtaking minutes Australia’s Delta Goodrem delivered a Eurovision performance destined for the history books, booking a slot in Sunday’s grand final and restoring Australia’s standing in the world’s oldest* music competition. Whatever the outcome, it’s been a wild week in Vienna. Captured here in print in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Melbourne Age, this is just a glimpse of the madness, the majesty and the magnificence. From Delta’s arrival at Eurovision, 52 years after her mentor Olivia Newton-John, to the extraordinary staging of her song Eclipse, in the Wiener Stadhalle. With more than 150 million people expected to watch around the world tomorrow morning, Australian time, it is certainly the biggest audience of Delta’s professional career. What makes the calculus so extraordinary is that Delta has not just met the moment head on, she has exceeded it in every way: a fusion of great acoustic and visual artistry. Watching her up close for the last week, the revelation is not that she has done it, but that she has moved through it all as though she was light as air. *non-Italian 🎉 #eurovision #eurovisionsongcontest #eurovision2026 #deltagoodrem @deltagoodrem @eurovision @sbs_australia @sbsondemand @sydneymorningherald @theageaustralia

"One touch, one kiss, All my life for a night like this. The world stops for us, Only love exists." A performance for the ages. The reaction in the Wiener Stadhalle is electric. @deltagoodrem #eurovision #eurovisionsongcontest #eurovision2026 #deltagoodrem Edit: Delta confirmed for Eurovision grand final. Incredible semi-final performance. Buzz on the ground went thermonuclear. 📸: Alma Bengtsson / EBU 📸: Sarah Louise Bennett / EBU

Australia’s Delta Goodrem sets the Eurovision stage ablaze with a stunning performance of Eclipse that has everyone speculating a possible win for Australia. These images were captured at rehearsals this week for Delta’s performance in semi-final 2. “Delta’s Eurovision ascension was a diaphanous fever dream of operatic grandiosity. Radiating the seismic vocal resonance of Celine Dion and the poised, regal ethereality of the Princess of Wales, she commanded the stage like a gilded colossus. This pyrotechnic spectacle of shimmering sequins and staccato high-notes was a masterclass in antipodean transcendence—a rhapsodic, kaleidoscopic triumph of pure, unadulterated pop majesty.” — Cadence von Trebleclef, chief critic, The Eurovisionian*. *possibly not actually a publication, but it should be. 📸: Alma Bengtsson / EBU 📸: Corinne Cumming / EBU 📸: Sarah Louise Bennett / EBU @eurovision #eurovision #eurovisionsongcontest #eurovision2026 @deltagoodrem #deltagoodrem

Meanwhile, in other news, I have been nominated for six awards, including Journalist of the Year, at the Los Angeles Press Club’s 2026 SoCal Journalism Awards. Among the nominated work: a conversation with Brendan Fraser for Spectrum, unpacking the third act of his career. (Disclosure: I am an OG Mummy fanboy.) And a genuinely confronting and difficult story to write: sitting down with actor @mat_stevenson_ to talk candidly about the unexplored personal trauma he had kept hidden for most of his TV career. Also, an essay on why A Charlie Brown Christmas, the beloved Christmas TV special, still leaves me in tears every year. (It’s all about that scene where Linus explains the meaning of Christmas.) An obituary reflecting on my conversations with legendary film director David Lynch. And a piece of work which is hard to revisit: an essay written in the wake of the antisemitic terrorist attack at Bondi Beach, trying to unravel the mosaic of grief, shock and distress with the coming of Christmas and Hanukkah, reclaiming agency through tears and finding precious fragments of hope in a seemingly hopeless moment. Kudos to all the JOTY nominees: @garymbaum @mikeyoconnell @hollywoodreporter @dandaddario @variety #rebeccaellis @latimes . And kudos to my amazing bosses at the @sydneymorningherald and @theageaustralia who invest in journalism every hour of every day. #tootingmyownhorn #tootingallthehorns #journalismmatters #socaljournalismawards @lapressclub

52 years in the making? Maybe the hand of fate has played a bigger part in @deltagoodrem ’s #Eurovision journey than we dare to imagine. More than five decades ago Delta’s mentor Olivia Newton-John walked down the same carpet (in Brighton, in the UK) to perform in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. Olivia lost to ABBA in an historic moment, but maybe in 2026 the field is open for an Australian win. Here, Delta reflects on the five decades bridging these two moments, as she walks the 2026 Eurovision turquoise carpet in Vienna, Austria. #longlivelove #eclipse #eurovision2026 #eurovisionsongcontest

This story has been simmering in the background for a while now, like a close-to-boiling pot whose lid was threatening to pop off. Somehow - despite persistent murmurs in the Eurovision fan world - it more or less made it to the finish line. SBS has now officially confirmed that Delta Goodrem will represent Australia at the 70th annual Eurovision Song Contest in May. “That’s 70 years of music being a part of people’s lives and hearts, every single year,” Goodrem told me. “The two greatest influences in my life, my dear mentor Olivia Newton-John, and Celine Dion [whose hit Eyes on Me was co-written by Goodrem], have both been a part of this stage. So it’s a really special stage, and one I’m honoured to be on.” The 41-year-old Sydney-born singer will perform Eclipse at Eurovision, which is being held at the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna, Austria, in May. In data terms, Goodrem is a statistically strong candidate for a win for Australia, despite Eurovison’s reputation for dancing grannies and heavy metal orcs. Bands – think ABBA (1974) and Maneskin (2021) – have only a 20 per cent chance of winning, based on data aggregated across the competition’s 70-year history. Big-staging, high-energy performances, like Netta (2018) and Loreen (2012 and 2023), win about 30 per cent of the time. So the biggest chance at a win – 50 per cent of all wins – is with soloists using relatively minimal staging, such as Lys Assia (1956) and Salvador Sobral (2017). “You’re an athlete at the end of the day,” Goodrem says. And, she adds, setting diplomacy aside for a moment, concedes she is in it to win it. “Of course,” Goodrem says. “I’m there representing Australia. Let’s go. I always want to do Australia proud. I have a very patriotic heart. I’ll do my absolute best, of course. I’m very excited to see all the other artists and just do my very best.” #eurovision #eurovisionsongcontest #deltagoodrem @deltagoodrem @sbs_australia @sbsondemand @eurovision

For the first decade of my career in journalism, I worked at News Ltd. I was lucky: it was the last gasp of a wild frontier era, where journalism was the wild west, the headlines were feisty, but there was also great humanity and humour, and the possibilities felt infinite. In that world, though it was a very masculine space, the most influential figures on my work were women. And while I could never claim to know Anna Murdoch, the curious, and somewhat fabulous thing is that she knew me. I met her by chance in the Sydney office of News Ltd as a young cadet journalist, and she knew me by name, and spoke to me in depth about my work. Which was startling, and unnerving, but also unsurprising, once you understood her intelligence and keen eye. I met Mrs Murdoch - as I always called her - again several times in Los Angeles, each time on the 20th Century Fox lot, in the executive dining room. I would be there on various junkets, having lunch with the Fox television PR team, and Mrs Murdoch, who would sit at the family's reserved table, with its landline telephone, would always wave. Her lunch guests were always fascinating. At one lunch, she introduced me to Carol Bayer Sager. And when we spoke, she always asked about my work, the Sydney office, and what I was doing in Los Angeles. In a world where I clearly understood the breadth and complexity of her world, I was always struck by the fact that she remembered me, and that she quizzed me with great interest about the sets I had visited, the new shows I had seen, and the movements and internal headlines of the News Ltd world. Harold Evans, who was the editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981, once described her as a "crystalline beauty … talkative, vivacious and open." He was spot on. Up close, I was always struck by her luminous beauty, and her great intelligence. She was also supremely stylish. I have always believed the measure of a person is not what you do, but what you leave behind. Anna Murdoch's charitable legacy speaks for itself, and the lives touched and bettered by her work at the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital is an astonishing marker with which to underline a life. #vale #annamurdoch

Greta Lee on the cover of Spectrum, from an interview in which we talked about fame, starring in Tron: Ares with Jared Leto, her work on The Morning Show and the impact of role models on young women. This was an awesomely fun interview. As a young kid growing up in Los Angeles as the child of South Korean immigrants, Lee did not see a lot of female action heroes on the big screen. There was Sigourney Weaver in Alien, and Linda Hamilton in Terminator. And in genre films, the now-iconic Michelle Yeoh, who went from Bond heroine to Star Trek villainess, and Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung. But “growing up, I really didn’t see much in terms of people who look like me who were in action roles,” Lee she said. “Linda Hamilton is someone who does come to mind and was someone I was thinking of during this process. And Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung, huge, huge influences. Just seeing that kind of physicality, [I was] so incredibly inspired by women who seem so fully embodied and are in their own bodies.” After an early career on the New York stage and in a raft of smaller roles, her work on Past Lives won her a Golden Globe nomination for best actress, and since 2021, she has starred in the Apple TV+ drama series The Morning Show, playing producer-turned-television executive Stella Bak. As Stella Bak, in particular, Lee has given an emotionally dimensional performance to one of the most complex women written for television. Brought in to the struggling broadcaster UBN as president of news, Stella was a digital disruptor trying to fix a legacy TV mess. In the third and fourth seasons, her ascendancy to the position of CEO of UBN put her in the cross-hairs of evolutionary change, with tech billionaire Paul Marks (Jon Hamm) knocking at the company’s door, a new board president, Celine Dumont (Marion Cotillard) and some spectacularly risky calls when it comes to her private life: an affair with Dumont’s husband, Miles (Aaron Pierre). “I would love to say that I’m able to fall madly in love with each [character] and let it go, but of course, bits and pieces of them stay.” @gretalee #tron #tronares @themorningshow #themorningshow @sydneymorningherald @theageaustralia

I have met and interviewed Paris Hilton twice. Each time we had the opportunity to sit and talk, and unpack the very complex layers of her life. Whatever people make of her - and everyone has an opinion - she takes the unserious world of fame very seriously. She was a reality TV pioneer. She was a social media trailblazer. What you don't expect, maybe, is to sit down and dive into a conversation about stage fright. “Before I did my first concert, I was so nervous, I was freaking out having anxiety because I had never done something like that before,” she told me last month. “[But] being nervous is a good thing. It just means you care. Now every time I get on stage, I’m like, this is my happy place. I love it so much. Seeing the excitement in the room and this love and energy. It’s indescribable, the feeling in the room.” This cover came out in January, ahead of the release of Infinite Icon, the documentary film which accompanies her 2024 studio album of the same name, produced with Australian-born pop star Sia. In it, we talked about family, celebrity, the influence of music in her life and the empowerment she derives from it, her struggles as a teenager in the youth residential treatment system, and her fight to reform the system, which took her to Washington D.C. to push the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act through the US Congress. “I hope that people remember me not just for beauty or fashion or things like that, things that are more superficial, I hope people remember me for using my voice to make a difference,” she said. “It’s just transformed my life in so many ways. It was so painful and traumatic. I was so scared because the world thought of me as this caricature. Hearing from so many survivors, it changed my life.” “For so long, a lot of us were taught just project this perfect life – you don’t want anything negative,” she said. “That’s just not how real life is. People are going to go through things in life. And even though it’s a difficult conversation, it’s important.” Cover image: Kevin Ostajewski. @parishilton #parishilton @kevinostaj #infiniteicon #sliving #thatshot #levelup

… and then the crowd came. 👀 Super Bowl LX was epic. My first Super Bowl. Hopefully not my last. A brilliant and buzzy game of football, even to an unqualified eye like mine. Seahawks 29, Patriots 13. And a mind-bending half-time show, starring @badbunnypr , with @ladygaga and @ricky_martin . It was beautiful, artful, infectious, energetic and fun, with a dash of heartfelt protest. As I wrote in my review (swipe left ➡️), it was not Les Misérables, but we were barricades-adjacent. #superbowl ##badbunnysuperbowl #superbowllx

Hawaii, one day. Super Bowl, the next. 🏈 #superbowl #superbowlLX #superbowlsunday #nfl @seahawks @patriots