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.
I can’t actually remember if there has been an artist with only his family as choristers on stage before ESC, but now it has happened anyway and it was our Albanian friends who did it.
Albina was the main vocalist’s name, and the rest of the Kelmendi family are called Albana, Bujar, Albin, Vesa and Sidorela, with three of them having first names beginning with Alb, they must have come from Albania, something else would possibly have been strange.
“Duje” is the name of the song and it places itself safely in the Balkan-pop category, which is so fortunate that it can contain both a bit of big balls and music that is more fun, a little twist bag of a song in other words.
Not surprisingly, it was the people who liked this song the best, 59 of the total 76 points this song received came from them and whether it is due to immigrants is not known, but in Switzerland this song was the favorite of the evening among those who voted.
Having to start after the big favorite in the final can’t be easy, but I think our Albanian friends didn’t let this affect them particularly much.
It is rare that this country disappoints us vocally and this time there was not much to complain about in this part of the performance either, here it is sung with a lot of empathy.
The biggest problem was probably that the song came across as quite messy and thus perhaps did not feel like a coherent song, but more like a display of the vocal capacity of the members of the Kelmendi family.
So it was possibly quite difficult to extract any messages from this song and then such a song quickly becomes quite forgettable and otherwise I really wonder what the ladies did with the red cloth after they had used it, Albina so we struggled to get it hidden again.
Really hope that this country can soon send something that doesn’t ooze Albanian and that can thus surprise us a little musically next year.
Featured image by Corinne Cumming – EBU