Conchita Wurst

Conchita Wurst is the stage persona of Austrian singer, recording artist and drag queen Tom Neuwirth. Neuwirth was born in Gmunden in Upper Austria and grew up in Bad Mitterndorf. In 2011 he completed an apprenticeship at the Graz Fashion School. 

He took part in the third season of the TV casting show Starmania on Austrian TV in 2006 He finished second behind Nadine Beiler. In 2007 he founded the boy band Jetzt anders !, which broke up in the same year.

Since 2011 Neuwirth has appeared as drag queen Conchita Wurst and since 2015 as Conchita, a diva with a full beard. Her fictional biography begins with the birth in the mountains of Colombia and leads through a childhood in Germany to the beginning of the career as a singer in Austria. Neuwirth explains this creation as a reaction and statement against discrimination that he experienced in his youth due to his homosexuality. His appearance as Conchita should also mean that “it is easier for young people – regardless of the reason why they are different from the others”. 

Neuwirth was first known in the role of Conchita Wurst in 2011 as a participant in the ORF talent show Die große Chance, in which he finished sixth in the final round. As Conchita Wurst, he also took part in the Austrian preliminary decision for the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 (Austria rocks the Song Contest) and in the final with the song “That’s What I Am” came in second place. In 2013 the song “That’s What I Am” could be found on the benefit album “Licht ins Dunkel 2013” and at a concert for the ORF Christmas campaign Licht ins Dunkel.

In 2014, Conchita Wurst was internally selected to represent Austria in the Eurovision Song Contest with the song “Rise like a Phoenix”. Conchita won the contest convincingly.

At the end of 2014 Conchita Wurst released the single “Heroes”, followed by “You Are Unstoppable” at the beginning of March 2015.  On May 15, 2015, she released her debut album Conchita, which went platinum just a few days after its release in Austria and also entered the charts in other European countries and Australia. At the Eurovision Song Contest 2015 in Vienna, Conchita  acted as a host in the Green Room. She was also involved in the opening song “Building Bridges”. 

After the joint opening of the 2017 Vienna Festival, an album by Conchita and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra was released in October 2018 with the title “From Vienna With Love”. In June 2018, a reinterpretation of “The Sound of Music” from the film of the same name was released as a single. In September, the second single followed “Für mich soll’s rote Rosen regnen”, a cover version of Hildegard Knef’s song of the same name.

In 2019 Tom Neuwirth announced that he would do a new project under the name WURST. When changing his image, he put his male side in the foreground as WURST. He did without wigs and appeared at events in a fetish outfit instead of clothes. The album T.O.M. – Truth Over Magnitude was published in autumn 2019. In the FameMaker program broadcast in September and October 2020, Neuwirth did not appear as the fictional character “Conchita Wurst” for the first time.

In 2021 Conchita WURST released the singles “Malibu” and “Bodymorphia”. She also started an online talkshow, OZAA Talk. In July 2022 Conchita released a song in German, “Erstmal Pause”, followed by another English song, “Call me up”.