His father Igor Rybak, a well-known classical violinist who performed alongside Pinchas Zukerman, defected to Norway in 1991 after a concert tour of a Belarusian chamber orchestra of which he was part of. His parents and most of his other family hail from the town Vitebsk, in Northern Belarus.
Rybak was born in Minsk, Belarus, which at that time was the Belarusian SSR in the Soviet Union.
He provided as an opening act to the Grand Final in 2010 and as an interval act in 20. He represented Norway again in the Eurovision Song Contest 2018 in Lisbon, Portugal, with the song " That's How You Write a Song", winning the second semi-final and finishing in 15th place in the Grand Final. Since then Rybak has been involved several times in the contest. His win was celebrated all across Europe for crushing stereotypes about the contest, such as needing an over-the-top performance or the negative influence of neighbour voting. Winning at the age of 23, Rybak remains the youngest solo male winner of the contest and the only Belarusian-born winner. Representing Norway in the 2009 contest in Moscow, Russia, he won the competition with 387 points-the highest tally any country has achieved in the history of Eurovision under the then voting system-with " Fairytale", a song he wrote and composed. Rybak is known for his extensive involvement in the Eurovision Song Contest. After two pop albums in 20, Rybak desired to be more of a family-orientated artist, focusing on children's and classical music alongside and frequently performed with youth orchestras throughout the world. His debut album, Fairytales, charted in the top 20 in nine European countries, including a top position in Norway and Russia. Singing in mainly English and Russian, Rybak, in his early twenties, held on to a teen idol status in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and to a certain extent in Western Asia. Though based in Oslo, Rybak extensively worked on television programmes and on tours in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Sweden throughout the early 2010s. Alexander Igorevich Rybak ( Russian: Александр Игоревич Рыбак) or Alyaxandr Iharavich Rybak ( Belarusian: Аляксандр Ігаравіч Рыбак born ) is a Belarusian-Norwegian singer-composer, violinist, pianist and actor.