The opera is known for drama: big characters, gorgeous settings and incredible voices. And so it’s only fitting that countertenor JJ is serving all of that and more in the music video for “Wasted Love” — Austria’s entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2025.
JJ — real nameJohannes Pietsch — has delivered one of the most unique songs of the year. Although it starts with light and airy opera, it progresses to opera underscored with heavy techno beats. Think Kate Miller-Heidke mixed with Go_A and you’ll start to understand the drama and payoff of the finish.
But behind that musical journey is a story of love — or rather love that never quite finds a place to land. That unrequited love can be overwhelming. As JJ sings: “I’m an ocean of love and you’re scared of water. You don’t want to go under, so you let me go under.”
JJ reveals “Wasted Love” — Austria’s Eurovision 2025 song
“This song perfectly captures my experience with unreciprocated love,” JJ says in the official press release sent by Austrian broadcaster ORF. “There’s a unique kind of heartbreak in having so much love to give but nowhere for it to land.”
“It feels like being adrift at sea on a fragile paper boat—grasping at any sliver of hope, only to watch it dissolve beneath you.”
“And yet, there’s something undeniably beautiful in that naïve devotion. Because, in the end, simply being able to love—no matter how wasted—is a beautiful thing in itself.”
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The music video is gorgeous and reflects the emotional intensity of the song. Directed by Marek Vesely, it was filmed in various locations, including a pine forest near Wiener Neustadt, the Stadttheater Baden, and the “I Dive Diving School” in Vienna, where JJ submerged for his underwater shots. A forest with water and snow was recreated in a studio in Lower Austria.
According to Marek, the music video “is intended to be a visual journey into the deep abyss of unrequited love, underscored by dramatic elements. It is structured in five acts and plays with the opera vibe as its underlying mood.”
You can thank a certain “Rise Like a Phoenix” singer for nurturing JJ’s love of Eurovision.
“My family and I have watched the ESC every year since Conchita’s victory, eating together and discussing the contestants,” he says. “It has brought us closer.“
Are you loving “Wasted Love”? Do you think that it can win it all? What type of staging would you like to see? Let us know in the comments box down below!
