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.

Our Italian friend Marco Mengoni was actually the artist the jury and the people agreed with the most, he got 176 points from the jury and 174 points from the people, it’s almost impossible to agree more if you ask me.

This meant that the song “Due Vite”, after being in third place after the jury had voted, fell down one place when the people had their say and understandably it was the people’s winner from Finland who pushed him down this one position.

This country has made a habit of being the country that gets the best placement of the so-called big 5 and it is really quite deserved in my opinion.

Their selection is the musical highlight of the year in Italy, the San Remo Festival, and it is only when an artist has won that they are asked nicely if they would like to participate in the ESC.

Fortunately, most people say yes to that offer and young Mr. Marconi had already been there once before so he was hardly difficult to persuade and this song, together with the Swedish winning song, is fighting a hard battle to be my favorite song this year.

When you have such an appearance as Marco has, you don’t really need that much staff on stage and the two guys who stood on a staircase and “fell” down on a trampoline were possibly more disturbing than rewarding for the performance.

Here there is pretty good control over the vocals and the intensity that there is tons of in the song is performed just as intensely as it should be, and throw in a good deal of melancholy into the song and I’m basically sold.

The reason why it didn’t go even better is perhaps that the song lacks the last little extra as a song to catch absolutely everyone.

And, you can already start to look forward to what our Italian friends will present next year, the chance that they will be good is imminent based on the statistics they have.

Featured image – Corinne Cumming – E B U