Picture of me with the two who many thought lost the most due to the fact that the juries have their say, one of them lost the win and the other lost a podium place.

The necessity of professional juries in the ESC has been a topic of discussion for quite a few years and the last time that discussion was up was of course in 2019 when it was our own KEiiNO who won the people, but lost so much with the jury that the overall victory was never within reach.

Then I was interviewed and stated that perhaps you should give the jury less power and that advice still applies, if you ask me.

Ever since 2009, the power has been shared 50/50 between the jury and the people, but it wasn’t until 2016 when they started giving points separately that the dissatisfaction with the jury’s job started to surface.

And already in the first year, the people’s favorite Russia and indeed also the jury’s favorite Australia had to lose to Ukraine, which came in second place with both jury groups and received the most points in total.

The following year in 2017, both jury groups agreed on who was the best, so there wasn’t really much to complain about, except that some people thought the winning song was pretty boring and old-fashioned then.

Back in 2018, it was the people’s favorite who won and our Israeli friend Netta came third with the jury, but was ahead of her fiercest competitor Cyprus at the time and won relatively well then.

We all remember that Norway won with the people in 2019 and that North Macedonia the jury, but the Netherlands with third place with the jury and second place with the people took home the trophy.

After a two-year break, the people’s favorite Italy won once again, who had only been honored with a fourth place by those who are supposed to have a clue, they liked Switzerland best in 2021.

And last year indeed history repeated itself, the winning country Ukraine was in fourth place and Britain was leading before the people had to give their verdict and a landslide of votes from the people finally gave them a comfortable victory.

In other words, this year is actually the first time since the two jury groups’ results were given separately that the jury’s favorite has won, because as you remember in 2017, the winning song was the best liked by both jury groups.

In 2015, the jury’s favorite also won, and who won then, well, our Swedish friends, some of you know how to hit the jury’s musical hearts, you might say.

Perhaps it is not so surprising then that it has boiled over a bit with some fans and the sourness that one’s favorite song did not win has a little difficulty getting over.

When you as a TV viewer vote for a song, you don’t need any professional reason to like the song, she or he who sings can be sexy, have a cool costume or maybe the person is making a little fun of the whole competition and that super-crazy.

A professional jury must assess the contributions differently, here the text, melody, vocal performance and the stage show must be assessed and ideally all these elements must give a good overall impression.

However, when you have to assess something like an ESC contribution and how it appears to the individual jury member, you can’t possibly get away from your personal taste.

A text can appear to some as very personal and touching and to others as pathetic nonsense and a vocal performance some people think is great, while others think that it is sung sourly.

Another thing I might feel is a recurring thing is that the jury members probably put a lot of emphasis on the stage show, last time I checked the competition was called Eurovision SONG Contest and not Eurovision SHOW Contest.

Take, for example, this year’s Israeli and Norwegian contributions, basically quite similar songs, with roughly the same content, and in that sense they should be rewarded fairly equally by the jury, but at the time they weren’t.

Noa Kirel got a whopping 177 points and was actually in second place after the juries had had their say, but our own Alessandra only got 52 points and had 16 countries ahead of her on the results list.

Was it worth so much that Noa had a modern and cool show with a long dance-break against Alessandra who was a little more toned down and perhaps appeared a little more anonymous on the TV screen?

It may seem that way, I am amazed that our Israeli friend is paid so well for a performance where a lot of pre-recorded vocals are used and that there is no singing at the last minute, there is dancing while you hear someone singing, but it is not the vocalist to put it like that.

Now it must be said that I also reacted a bit to the opening sequence to Norway with the Italian text, it looked a bit strange when you zoomed in on Alessandra and saw that she didn’t start singing because the opening part was out.

Shouldn’t those who work in the music industry crack down on such “cheating” which is admittedly legal, but which I believe does not belong in a competition which for a very long time was based on all vocals being live.

The jury will also reward originality and if you think back to 2019 where North Macedonia won with the jury, I really wonder what was original about that song, a more standard ballad you’ll have to look for a long time, the remarkable thing about that song was probably extremely good vocals.

As you understand the rules the jury has, a lot of personal judgment on the part of the individual jury member must necessarily come into play and then it can sometimes be difficult to understand why they judge the way they do.

And it’s a bit incredible that the hit potential of one contribution is obviously not particularly emphasized, in my opinion the fact that a song is liked by a lot of people is a stamp of quality regardless of the other qualities this song has.

As for this year’s Finnish entry, which many thought should have won, it must be said that he did not quite do his job at the jury final, he was a bit unsteady vocally and our own Alessandra also had some vocal missteps at the same jury final.

However difficult it is to understand that they should be punished so severely for this, they were not the only ones with vocal flaws this evening.

I think the juries will probably let the EBU pass, but changes must be made, either that they get less power than the people, however they will lose too much power, it will probably almost always be the case that the people’s favorite will win and then you lose the dramaturgy the current the way the points are awarded.

Then it might be better for the jury to be expanded with more members so that the individual jury member’s power is reduced and perhaps also make it so that the jury members do not have to rank all the songs, but instead give them points between 1 to 10 and then you would rather have a rematch between the songs that end on the same score.

We will have to wait anxiously for what the EBU comes up with next year, it will be quite strange if they do not make any changes, they have otherwise become very happy to make changes to our beloved competition.

And to answer the question in the title, of course they have a clue, but have shown an obvious lack of flair for which songs have a big impact with the audience and it causes a bit of noise from time to time.