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.

In terms of points, from 15th place to 10th place there was less than 10 points, so here it was actually pretty random which place you got and the ones who drew the shortest straw in this way were the girls Teya and Salena who were so unlucky that they “only” scored 120 points and thus lost a top-ten position by quite a few points.

“Who The Hell Is Edgar?” called the song and some probably think that it got a little too few points and with a second place in the bag from its semi-final, the final place in the final was probably a bit of a disappointment.

That the jury had this song in 8th place after they had had their say with their 104 points awarded was perhaps not so surprising, but that the people only thought this was worth 16 points was rather more negatively surprising.

They were allowed to start the finale show with their song and maybe the people simply hadn’t quite gotten into the mood that might be required to like this song, who knows?

Vocals are what we hear perfectly fine, but I think that the show can’t quite pull it off, there is something connected about it.

I actually think bringing in dancing girls was a big mistake, the grown-up guys who participated in the pre-video were much cooler and are they singing about a grown-up American male author and then it’s stripped of masculinity on stage?

The subtle humor and satire in the text disappears in something tactful and nice to look at and thus becomes rather uninteresting and simply not the song that should start the show by capturing everyone in the audience.

The visual direction on this number is not quite top-notch either, it becomes too messy and the charm of the song disappears in far too many distance shots of the stage and thus the presentation of the song also suffers.

This was the first time our Austrian friends were in the final since 2018, shall we hope for a repeat of that feat next year at least?

Featured image – Corinne Cumming – EBU