Tony Iommi does not have high hopes for the song he wrote for Eurovision 2013. Despite his uneasy pride at Lonely Planet being used as Armenia's official entry, the Black Sabbath guitarist said the track will probably get "slagged [off], like everything else does".

"I've always thought, 'Oh no, not the Eurovision', and here I am in it now," Iommi said in an interview with BBC News. It certainly wasn't the 65-year-old who got in touch with Yerevan's Eurovision bosses: reps for the Armenian public television network contacted the rocker and asked for his help. "I first said: 'Oh God, I don't know,'" Iommi recalled. "It seemed really strange, me doing a Eurovision song, I don't usually do that. But I said: 'I've got a rock ballad, I'll send it over.'"

Iommi's riffing balladry soon became Lonely Planet, with lyrics by Vardan Zadoyan. It was one of four tracks presented to Armenian voters by singer Gor Sujyan and his band Dorians. Lonely Planet won out over tunes with titles such as Toy Planet, No Time and The Truth. "The singer has a really good voice," Iommi said on his website.

In interviews with the Armenian press, Sujyan laid out his priorities as the country's Eurovision nominee. Iommi's name wasn't mentioned even once. "[The] song calls for peace. We hope that everybody who listens to this song will think about that message," Sujyan told ESC Daily.

In another interview, the singer promised that he and Dorians would truly rock. "It seems to me that it will be beneficient neither for us nor to the country if we lose face," he said.

A competitor since 2006, Armenia has never won Eurovision, and it sat out last year's contest due to hostilities with the host country, Azerbaijan. But Armenia will compete at this year's event, on 18 May, appearing in Malmö, Sweden, alongside performers such as the UK nominee, Total Eclipse of the Heart singer Bonnie Tyler.