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.

The ESC downs for our Irish friends seem to have no end, for almost 20 years they had the throne alone at the top as the most winning nation of all time, but this year they were joined at the top of that very podium and that it was our Swedish friends who received that honor would hardly have given any great odds exactly.

After many years of internal selection that song, this country in the west had a final and there the band Wild Youth came away with the victory with a song that was actually not quite crazy in the opinion of many.

“We Are One” was called it and unfortunately it would turn out that when it made it to the international final the hope they must have had of making it to the final was not fulfilled, they have only managed to do that once since 2013 and that was known in 2018.

I feel that it wasn’t the song that was the biggest problem and the main factor why they only received a total of 10 points from 5 countries, including Norway who actually thought this song was worth 3 points.

First I want to say that the guys in Wild Youth participated in the most definitely tough semi-final, a fact underlined by the fact that four countries only got 24 of the 928 points awarded, the people had simply used up their votes on other countries.

As for the performance itself, it is plagued by a vocal that is unstable and a bit screechy at times and who on earth got the idea to put the vocalist in a gold lame suit is unknown, for me it was very stingy.

I also miss the band feeling, here there are four guys doing their own thing and why do we hear so many vocals while the vocalist clearly doesn’t sing?

He is also troubled by quite a bit of nervousness and he is never able to fully connect with me as a TV viewer and then much of the charm in the song and the performance actually falls away, a much tighter performance would have taken them much longer I think now.

Anyway, one can only wonder what this country really has to do to become a decent ESC nation again.

Featured image by Corrine Cummings – EBU