ESC Covers, like in previous years, google translated ESC Norge discussion on the Eurovision song contest positions, from Norwegian to English.

This is a blog post and only represents the writer Morten Thomassen’s own views.

Did you know that after the Ukrainian winning song in 2022 received 12 points from 28 countries’ telephone votes, the winning songs since then have only received one 12 in total, and that was Nemo from Ukraine last year, meaning as many 12-pointers from the people as Norway has received in the same period of time.

In other words, for the third year in a row, it was the jury’s favorite that garnered enough votes in the jury portion of the vote to hold off the competitors who beat them when the public’s points came in, and that’s exactly what has caused some grumbling among fans and others, but this year that grumbling has subsided.

It’s probably not so much because JJ won with the song “Wasted Love”, no, it probably had more to do with the country that was closest to Johannes Pietsch, as he is actually called, on the results list, namely Israel. I’ve rarely been in a more nerve-wracking press center as we waited for the number of votes Austria would receive from the people, and you could feel the relief in the room when JJ was called out as the winner.

JJ initially had only a 21% chance of winning according to those who set the odds, but I think that the special situation with some boycotting Israel and others voting like crazy for them really messes up the result so that it becomes really difficult to predict a winner and I choose to believe that it is the way the people vote that has become difficult to predict.

But, back to the winning song, it will hardly come as a surprise that young Mr. Pietsch works daily at the Vienna State Opera where he has had roles in several productions and when you look at his stage show, there is little doubt that he can perform a song with steely control of his voice, empathy and pathos, the type of song he performed requires.

It wasn’t a bad move to choose to have the entire performance in black and white to somehow emphasize the somberness of the song, it increased the artistic value considerably and I’m actually a little surprised that he didn’t win the jury votes more overwhelmingly than he did, but then his fiercest competitors were Switzerland and France, who also had high artistic value in their performances, seen through the jury’s eyes, I think.

And as long as a portion of those who voted are either for or against Israel, there could be a chance that those who wanted a winner other than Israel possibly saw our Austrian friend as the best option to vote for for this song to win, that this song could get 178 telephone voting points and Switzerland got none is still a mystery to me.

For the first time since 2016, there will be a national final in next year’s host country, and the winner will therefore sing in Vienna in the final, and one can only hope that the winner doesn’t do as poorly as the last time an Austrian sang on home soil, when they got 0 points and last place in the final.

In any case, it is now time to look ahead to the next ESC season and declare the 2025 season over.

Featured image – Youtube