Morten Thomssen today looks at the German 2023 Eurovision selection. ESC Covers google translated it from Norwegian to English.

Watching this year’s German final on the internet and now I can say something about it the songs.

Melody 1 – Trong

Here it’s full speed from the first note and the song is funky like that, but the vocals aren’t exactly as funky I think. Then the whole thing becomes a bit of a puzzle, even if it springs from the performance itself. However, it’s a bit cool that a bit of Vietnamese is in the song then. And it’s filled with charm and it rarely hurts, but doesn’t give me extra points.

Melody 2 – René Miller

The decent enough pop song has a lot of melancholic undertones and could therefore be something I could find myself falling for. Unfortunately, the vocalist’s voice feels a little introverted and it takes a little too long before it takes off. And when it does, it happens in a slightly shaky way. The song ends a bit predictably, and that drags it down as well.

Melody 3 – Anica Russo

Finally an artist who has more control over his voice. The song is a slightly strange case of a song and it captures and imprisons me in a way where she stands out in her field. The song builds up perfectly and dramatically in a cool way and the voice, which is also cool, underpins this perfectly. I love such differentness in our dear competition.

Melody 4 – Lonely Spring

A young rock band has proven to be a success factor in this competition. But, then you must first have steely control over the vocals and a song that hits and swings. Here it’s just almost in most areas and I feel that this rather rough song doesn’t quite convince me. And why are they dressed in white suits when they sing rock, incomprehensible.

Tune 5 – Will Church

It is a little strange that an artist with so much empathy in his voice manages to be almost chemically free of empathy in his performance. It totally crashes for me and when it’s also the type of song I rarely take off on, it becomes a bit long minutes. It’s basically just good vocals almost all the time and a melancholic undertone that draws this out.

Tune 6 – Patty Gurdy

We have heard folk music from several countries and then I guess someone felt that this was a good idea in the German final. Then it would have been nice to have something that felt a bit original, here I just feel like I’m hearing stanzas from songs I’ve heard before. When the vocals don’t impress either and it’s quite strained at times, the whole song feels a bit wasted unfortunately.

Melody 7 – Not Hüftgold

We had to get a party beater and then I’ll take everything, don’t you think? Well, unfortunately that’s not going to happen, here is a well-grown man who looks more like a clown than a partygoer. Vocally, it’s very flat and I’m afraid that this party will flatten out very quickly and that you may have to have a lot of fun inside before you think that this is festive. For me it was only the most troublesome.

There should have been a contribution here, but the vocalist of the group Frida Gold simply lost her voice due to strep throat and then this adventure was over for them.

Melody 8 – Lord Of The Lost

For a few tiny seconds we think this is a calm song, but here it gives up quite quickly and it becomes a full-blooded rock song. The vocalist has a rough voice and I find it a bit charming that he has a clear German accent when he sings. I am simply delighted by this kind of music that differs so monumentally from what we are usually served on the ESC stage, I am probably a closet rocker.

I think there is a bit too much talking between the songs, most presenters around the national finals should take a course at NRK in that particular area.

Ilse DeLange took care of the halftime feature, she is best remembered as half of the duo The Common Linnets who finished second in 2014.

There was also time for a small interview with Malik Harris who sang for Germany last year before the voting, but all in all I think there was too much talking, you basically have your own programs for this.

As in Norway, the international jury counts 50% and the people themselves the last 50%. It seems that the juries spread the 12 points quite well at the beginning, but Will Church takes most of them and leads after the juries have had their say.

Then we get as if the people agree with the “foreigners” like in Norway or if our German friends have another favourite, but first another intermission feature, this time with a medley of well-known ESC songs, that’s nice, but right here it feels a bit like a waste of time

And I can promise you that the audience totally disagreed with the jury, they loved the rock group Lord Of The Lost and so they went straight up and took the trophy, the audience pretty much turned the jury’s score list upside down and the jury’s favorites got low scores.

Nice that my favorite song won, can’t complain about that.