Morten Thomassen from Norway started reported on the final positions of the 37 entries in the 2023 Eurovision song contest. ESC Covers google translated it from Norwegian to English.

This is a blog entry and represents only writer Morten Thomassen’s own views.

To the extent that it can be said that there is a curse on the ESC, one of them must be that the host country will do rather poorly on the results list.

Last year’s organizer Italy probably did pretty well, that can hardly be said about our British friend Mae Müller and her song “I Wrote A Song”.

There were actually quite high expectations for a respectable placement for this song and the drop was therefore very large, from one place away from victory last year to one place away from last place this year, and had it not been for the points-wise benevolence of Ukraine who accounted for the whole 9 of the 24 points received had been given last place.

I don’t want to say that there was so much wrong with this year’s British song, it had modern vibes and an attitude that is not hard to like, but when it comes to such songs the challenge is to get the same vibes and attitude on stage when it to be sung and danced.

And unfortunately, our friend Mae was probably not quite up to this challenge, the ones we got to see on stage were simply too complicated.

The biggest problem was probably a really bad vocal in parts of the song, she should have made it a little better throughout the song at times, but by then the damage would have already been done, I’m afraid.

She tries as hard as she can to be in the song, but somehow it seems that she is lagging behind and never quite gets into the song and the mood the performance should have.

Perhaps she did not have the necessary stage experience for such a large number and if a number is too small for what you have to do, it unfortunately becomes a bit of a puzzle, even if the starting point is not necessarily that.

One can only hope that when this country is finally allowed to organize a final, they will want to do it again after they have won themselves.

Featured image by Corrine Cumming – EBU