A Canberra musician is taking on the world’s biggest song contest – Eurovision (the very same one that launched ABBA) – but he’s not representing Australia, Chris Endrey is playing for the tiny Republic of San Marino.
The reason being, the cost of living forced Chris to migrate to Hungary and whilst in Europe, he attended a Eurovision song-writing camp in Norway and discovered that San Marino (a microstate in Italy with just 33,419 people) welcomes any nation to represent them at Eurovision.
Chris is Canberra born-and-bred (the old Woden Valley Hospital no-less) and coincidentally, used to host “Canbeurovision”, a fun suburb-based song competition that was so successful it went from a small gig at Smith’s Alternative to a sold-out show at the Canberra Theatre.
Fast forward to 2025, Chris is about to catch a six-hour bus from Hungary to Slovenia and then a five-and-a-half-hour drive to San Marino for the Eurovision audition this Friday, 14 February, using money from a GoFundMe page supported largely by Canberrans.
He’s not taking on the behemoth song contest alone though. At the Eurovision song-writing camp, Chris met Slovenian Neli and a Norwegian Tina and together they are “Farmacy”.
Let me preface the next sentence by saying that Eurovision is known for its eccentricity (grandma bands to stage-crashing gorillas). Eurovision songs can be bizarre (Norway’s Give That Wolf a Banana in 2022) and Eurovision costumes are outrageous (Montenegro’s cyborg costumes in 2013).
Bearing that in mind, Chris is entering the song Baed, a rap song featuring a cow bell, performed as a ram (yes you read that right).
“Our song is really ridiculous, so it’s a lot of fun,” Chris said from Budapest. “I do a rap as a ram. It’s a dance banger and we’re all sheep and we’re sort of lamenting the loss of community.
“It’s funny, when we wrote it, I wasn’t anticipating ever having to perform it. It’s actually the only rap I’ve ever written.”
Raising sheep awareness is not unusual by Eurovision standards. Neither are sheep costumes.
“I’m going for a lot of skin and fur,” Chris said. “But I still haven’t nailed it down, which is cutting it a bit fine.”
Chris is in with a real chance because last year’s Eurovision winner (Switzerland’s Nemo) also completed the same Eurovision song-writing camp as Chris.
“I’m in the semi-finals for San Marino and if we win that, we are guaranteed to represent San Marino at Eurovision,” Chris said. “There were some 1,500 entrants and now it’s down to about 100. Even a 1% chance of being at Eurovision in Switzerland is really good.”
This weekend, Chris and his band will audition at a theatre in San Marino where it will be televised locally.
“Just to be able to go to San Marino already is an absurdly fun thing to do,” Chris said. “To go to this tiny micro-state and compete in a theatre on their TV with a bunch of other artists from around the world is already a ridiculous story to tell. I’m just happy to follow the thread and see how far it goes.”
Chris isn’t daunted by the chance of performing live at Eurovision and being beamed to 163 million people around the world (not to mention 6.5 billion views of #Eurovision on TikTok).
“That doesn’t faze me,” Chris said. “It would just be fun to get to be a part of it. The main thing I like is just being in the arena and seeing the other acts. I’m not at all attached to the idea of winning Eurovision and I’m not scared of the idea of failing on the road to that.”
Migrating from Canberra to Budapest to beat the cost of living crisis may seem like an extreme move but Chris said it was necessary.
“I can’t really afford to live in Australia and to have a family, so we moved somewhere cheaper. Budapest is beautiful,” Chris said. “Being a performer is not a high wage thing unless you’re extremely successful, which I didn’t mind. I never really minded being poor but it got to the point that I couldn’t even afford to have a baseline existence anymore because it’s so expensive. I wanted to build a family. It’s been really great to be able to do that.”
Chris has been living in Budapest with his partner for two years and now has two toddlers.
“I really miss pre-season training at ANU for Aussie rules oddly enough,” Chris said. “That’s on now.”
Stay tuned to Chris’s Eurovision journey via his Instagram or follow Farmacy on Instagram.
