Athena Manoukian

Athena Manoukian
Contestant Profile
Birth Date	22 May 1994
Age	24 (at time of audition)
Hometown	Athens, Greece
Occupation	Songwriter
15
Category	Girls
Placement	Eliminated during deliberations or Six Chair Challenge (unknown)
Gallery

Athena Manoukian (born 22 May 1994) is a singer songwriter from Athens, Greece, and based in Hannover, Germany at the time of the audition, who auditioned for The X Factor UK (Series 15).

She gathered headlines for her audition of the 50 Shades version of Beyonce's Crazy In Love, with backing dancers alongside her, which impressed Simon Cowell and Robbie Williams, but was greeted with skepticism by Louis Tomlinson and Ayda Field. However, she got the requisite 3 yeses.

In spite of this, she was not seen at any later point in the series, and it was unknown whether she was eliminated at the deliberation stage, during the 6 chair challenge, or of her own accord, given that she had auditioned on an invitational basis, and has described her performance as a guest performance on some occasions.

The audition has been featured on several X Factor Global compilation videos.

Post X Factor

Whilst Athena is Greek, she is of Armenian descent, and it was with the Eurasian country, which is famous for its large diaspora, where she gained notoriety, after participating in their Eurovision Song Contest pre selection Depi Evratesil (Towards Eurovision) in 2020 with her self written hip hop and r&b song "Chains On You", which won the event and the right to represent Armenia in the event, which was to take place in Rotterdam, only for the Song Contest to be cancelled due to the COVID 19 pandemic. The song received strong reviews, gathering both acclaim and criticism, and was compared to music by Beyonce, Ariana Grande, former Fifth Harmony member Normani and Megan Thee Stallion, and Little Mix. On the weekend that the contest (replaced by a telethon which featured 30 second extracts of each of the entries, including "Chains On You", as well as 40 of the acts, including Athena, singing a group cover) would have taken place, she followed it up with "Dolla", which, aside from being another song she wrote entirely by herself, and with the same production partner, she also went on to direct the music video for.

Trivia

• She had attempted to represent Greece in Junior Eurovision in 2008, but placed 7th in their pre selection. She had released a number of major label singles in Greece in 2011, 2012 and 2014, but was no longer on any record label at the time of her audition.

• A year before the audition, she wrote a song that was featured on 2005 Eurovision winner Helena Paparizou's album.
• She was one of 4 non-UK Eurovision related acts in that series of X Factor, along with Brendan Murray (represented Ireland), Cezar Ouatu (represented Romania) and Gaia Cauchi, who became a part of Sweet Sense during this series (Junior winner, Malta).