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.

Now that we have finished with the countries that, disappointingly, did not make it to the finals, I’m going to start with the countries that got to experience the finals from the stage and really, perhaps not so unexpectedly, it was once again one of the so-called big 5 countries that occupied 26th the place which we all understand meant they came last.

It is obvious that the countries that are directly qualified start the finals with some kind of disadvantage, could it be the goodwill gained by managing to qualify for the finals that makes such a big impact?

Let’s not speculate too much about it, it must be stated that the German group “Lord Of The Lost” did not get much help from the fact that the German public with a large majority wanted them as their representatives, completely contrary to the taste of the international jury who also voted in their local final.

In their fiery red costumes, they fit the title of the song “Blood & Glitter” like a glove, so in that sense there wasn’t much to draw from what they did on stage, but with a few stray points both from the jury and the people, it didn’t exactly sparkle much of 18 points in total.

After Måneskin won a few years ago, there has been a bit of inflation in rock songs, so it may be that people in general have become a bit tired of them, even though I love this genre in our beloved competition.

A typical mistake rock bands make in ESC is that they are placed in separate places without the opportunity to be a band together, they instead become a bunch of individualists on stage and then what happens on stage becomes a bit tame no matter how fierce the costumes and how much fire and pyro they use.

I love the voice of the vocalist, it’s just as rough and scrappy as you should expect for a song like this, but the costume was possibly a bit too androgynous to feel completely rock.

However, our German friends will have to try and I hope they drum together for a national final next year as well, always nice to have several songs to choose from when a country’s ESC contribution is to be chosen.

Featured image – Corinne Cummings – EBU