First - Denmark. Coming off the back of two top 5 finishes in a row, DR presented nine entries in Aalborg on Saturday night. I say nine, as there was a 10th entry, "Nowhere" by "Valen:Tine, which was disqualified after having been published online in July 2011, breaking the rules of the contest. You'd think DR would have checked each song to make sure of this, but it was down to eagle-eyed fans to spot this. Somewhat confusingly, they decided to keep the original running order and numbers, meaning we jumped straight from song 1 to song 3!
The pre-favourites with the bookies were 12 year old Jesper Nohrstedt singing "Take Our Hearts", an uptempo track which sadly doesn't go anywhere and Danish/Swedish duo Christian Brøns & Patrik Isaksson with their tribute to U2's "With Or Without You", otherwise known as "Venter".
My favourite was "Overflow" by Le Freak lead singer, Ditte Marie, which was kind of a electroschlager track, if such a thing exists! ( Well it does now...) It even had a glorious keychange!
I also quite liked the song by Aya "Best Thing That I Got" - though her voice reminded me a bit of Germany's 2001 singer Michelle. And as for that outfit...
Eurovision is known for classic outfits, and tonight was no exception. There were many delights on offer! We had a dress made of multi-coloured straws from Aya, a white outfit with tassels that Kylie would be proud of from Ditte Marie, a black monstrosity with giant shoulderpads from Karen Viuff (not to mention her interesting hair-do), and the amazingly named Soluna Samay was no exception either - she had a sailors outfit on complete with hat and giant epaulettes!
We also had a CLASSIC moment with the entry by Suriya, called "Forever I B Young" which we've never quite seen anything like it before on a Eurovision stage! I'm not sure how to describe this song, but take a look for yourself...
HOT MESS is the best I can come up with. Her vocals left a lot to be desired, and she looked as if she'd just come straight from the local club! There's not much of a song there either, but maybe I should commend DR for actually daring to choose something like this in their selection. Most of the other tracks were rather MOR and safe, like Kenneth Potempa's "Reach The Sky" which was rather Coldplay lite, and Karen Viuff's "Universe" whic was ruined by her nervous and shaky performance.
However, the HIGHLIGHT of the show came towards the end of song by the favourites, the aforementioned duo Christian and Patrik when Christian fluffed the money note! They even kept this part in the recap of the songs. Maybe DR didn't want them to win after all. Sadly all trace of the song has been deleted from YouTube so I'm unable to share this with you...
The top 3 were Jesper, Christian/Patrik and Soluna. None of which came as a surprise. After all three performed, the juries voted, putting Jesper just ahead of Soluna. A Friend In London, last year's Danish entrants performed with a rather bizarre special guest appearance from Howie D of the Backstreet Boys who came on stage for the last 30 seconds of the song. Unfortunately for him, his microphone seemed to fail and we couldn't hear him! All that way for nothing...
It was then down to the reveal of the SMS voting. Venter was announced in third place. In a bit of a shock, Soluna was then announced as the winner, and won a trip to Baku!
While I wasn't a massive fan of the song on first listen, the performance won me over, as Soluna gave a rather polished performance. Many have compared her to Anna Bergendahl - Sweden's entrant in 2010, but the only similarity I can see is that she brandishes a guitar. The chorus does remind me a little of Seal's "Crazy", but then when have Eurovision songs been completely original? The lyrics of the song though, are more than a bit dodgy... As for chances in Baku? Well it's a bit early to make a prediction as so far we've only heard three entries. I'd say she has a good chance of qualifying though...
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