Bear, a former construction mechanic, began his career in 2016 as a street musician. Since then, he has gone on to a successful career in both Germany and Switzerland.
Bear was selected by a 20-strong international jury to be Switzerland’s representative.
Bear’s entry is the song Boys Do Cry, which he says was motivated by wanting “not to be ashamed of my feelings”.
“I don’t want to put on emotional armour, I want to be who I am. I would like to encourage my audience to do the same.”
Switzerland: Two-time winners of Eurovision
Multi-lingual Switzerland historically held an advantage in the competition, as the rules of the contest formerly required the song to be sung in a national language.
While Switzerland has entered songs in each of the country’s four official languages as well as in English, the country’s two victorious songs were both sung in French.
Boys Do Cry is sung in English.
Switzerland has a strong history in Eurovision, having won the very first edition of the competition in 1956 as well as in 1988.
The winning song in 1988, Ne partez pas sans moi, was written in Switzerland but sung by Canadian singer Celine Dion.
It remains the last French language song to win the contest.
The Swiss city of Lausanne hosted the competition in 1989.
Since then Switzerland has only missed the annual competition on four occasions: 1995, 1999, 2001 and 2003.
The 2022 Eurovision Song Contest will take place in the Italian city of Turin in May.
Russia has been banned from the competition due to the invasion of Ukraine.
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