Morten Thomassen from Norway decided to write about some of his memories of Eurovision and the Norwegian Eurovision selection. ESC Covers again will publish it after google translating it from Norwegian to English.

One of the most nerve-wracking moments of ESC week is the ten minutes at the end of each semi-final where it will be revealed which 10 countries will make it to the final and which countries will have their ESC final dream dashed.

I sat in the green room during the first semi-final in Oslo in 2010 and can thus confirm that to the extent that the atmosphere in a room can be cut, this is the time to do it.

For the poor artists and their delegation sitting in their seats, it must be enormously nerve-wracking and what they see and not us who watch on TV is that there are camera crews standing in front of some delegations and then everyone knows that it will be one of those who will be read aloud next time, imagine the feeling you have if there is no camera person in front of you.

But, some cameramen obviously have a wicked sense of humour, back in 2008 when there was one country left to read out and Norway was still not included, there was no cameraman in front of Maria Haukaas Storeng and her team.

One of the choir members told me that they then “realized” that the final place had been lost and began to digest the loss when the presenters said “Norway” and a cameraman jumped out and filmed the Norwegian reaction of joy.

It is natural to be sad when one’s own country or another favorite song one might have does not make it to the final, sometimes it is understandable when the song or performance does not quite make it to the top ten in a semi-final, but other times it is quite incomprehensible.

One thing I eventually noticed is that the sound in the hall is very often a good deal better than the sound that those watching TV get, well what I really mean is that the vocal effort sounds better in the hall than it does on Television.

It is a good transition to the time when I was most disappointed that Norway did not make it to the final, we are in 2011 and the artist in question is naturally Stella Mwangi.

I sat in the front row when she sang “Haba Haba” and I’m not exaggerating when I claim that she got the best reception from the audience in the hall, the song literally boiled with African rhythms and I considered that this should be a good sailing into the final .

When Norway was not among the 10 countries that were announced as finalists, I was not disappointed, no, I was really pissed off and hurled some harsh words on the Facebook page of the MGP club as someone else on the board with slightly less emotional ties to the song was removed quite soon and it was basically good in retrospect.

And those who were subsequently able to watch the recording from the semi-final, you realize that Stella did not show herself from her best side vocally and that the final place was perhaps not as unfair as it was first thought.

Now it must be said in Miss Mwangi’s defense that she fell ill and thus was unable to deliver the goods sufficiently and I also believe that African rhythms were probably not quite what was expected from a Norwegian contribution and that unfortunately it also slowed down, because performances with bad vocals have made it to the final, so here we can’t just blame the vocals.

And the song is still a great song if you ask me.

I will publish an Afrikaans cover of HABA HABA instead of Stella’s original which people know quite well. The cover is by two brothers DIE CAMPBELLS. It appeared as one track on a platinum CD by them.

For me the memories of Eurovision in Dusseldorf is dominated by the APPLE Eurovision. The organization decided that every day where will be free apples. I have never eaten that many apples in my entire life.

Featured image – Wikipedia