ESC Covers google translated a post by Morten Thomassen from Norway from Norwegian to English.  This is a blog entry and represents only writer Morten Thomassen’s own views.

From time to time you wonder what happens in our beloved competition and in this series I will comment on some episodes and events that absolutely deserve the title “Why”.

This week we are going back to last year and the Norwegian entry “Queen Of Kings” performed by Norwegian-Italian Alessandra who finished in a great 5th place, of which most of the points that got her up so high came from the people who had her in 3rd place behind two big favorites that year, Sweden and Finland.

Man, you’d think that I should be satisfied with a fifth place, we Norwegians are not very blasé with good positions in ESC, we’ve only been in the top 5 12 times, but just our last top 5 position I have things to postpone on.

Because the performance Alessandra did on stage in Liverpool, good as it was, showed with all clarity how far behind we are on the stage compared to quite a few of the countries we compete against.

A bit ugly, I would almost say that in terms of presentation we are sending a First-price thing, but many other countries have obviously been to a store with more exclusive goods.

In other words, it’s not the song and the artist, but the way the song is performed, here it seems as if Norway should have it simple and frugal and not least dark on stage, god forbid if we see what happens on stage.

We saw that very well in 2023 and to a certain extent also now in 2024, one thing is toned down, another thing is to make the artists almost disappear.

Well, in 2024 there was much more life on stage during the Norwegian contribution than in 2023, in 2024 the biggest problem was probably that the song did not have sufficient momentum to capture either the jury or the audience.

Momentum, Alessandra’s song was worth a thousand, it was an ever-so-small talking point even before it had won the Norwegian final and that happens very rarely, I would say.

I can live with the fact that a performance is only so visually appropriate in a Norwegian final, after all, all the contributions in the Norwegian final should feel equally well taken care of, and they most likely are.

But, when the song makes it to ESC, then one should throw all modesty overboard and use the right tools to make the Norwegian song shine on stage.

I don’t think that’s exactly what has been achieved in the last two years, and I stubbornly believe that we were punished for that in 2023 and perhaps missed a podium place due to an overly dark stage show on 13 May last year, for example, can name four dancers which we barely saw on stage, what’s the point of such a thing?

Just look at how the basically quite similar song from Israel “Unicorn” did with the juries with the show Noa Kirel had on stage, there is little doubt that the juries who have 50% of the power allow themselves to be seduced by stage shows that sit and show present the song in the best way.

Norway seems to not want to be part of the charm-the-jury-with-a-good-show-run and then we get paid as we do from the jury and then you just have to ask yourself why NRK runs this line.

One can hope that a new MGP general has other wishes on how songs should look visually, regardless, our song from ESC-2023 is still a cool song.

Featured image – Youtube