Like previous years, ESC COVERS will again share a blog post from Morten Thomassen of OGAE NORWAY with his views on the positions reached by all 35 2026 entries. ESC Covers google translated it from Norwegian to English.

 I highly doubt that there were very many people who had predicted in advance that Swedish Felicia and her song “My System” would end up in a 2-digit position where the first digit was 2, in fact this is only the third time a song from our dear neighboring country has ended up so far down the results list in a final.

And our Swedish friends are probably thanking higher ESC powers for reinstating the jury in the semi-final. If that hadn’t happened, Tuesday night in ESC week would have been a shocking experience for fans of Swedish ESC entries. The odds were 95% chance of qualifying for the final and it happened with a cry of distress, not a big cry of distress, but a cry of distress according to Swedish terminology.

How could this great power in the ESC context end up in this situation? Well, first of all, I think that the artist they sent did not quite have the qualities needed, and I don’t just blame the fact that she was demonstrably ill towards the end of the ESC week, she probably fainted after one of the performances at a dress rehearsal.

Vocally, this was of the very varying kind, everything from great to quite cuttingly false at times and we are not used to that from this side and throw in a song that strictly speaking hardly deserves to be called that, it was too boring and bland in my opinion.

A lot of this could be saved by a good stage show and the laser show was cool enough, but when you sing about getting an ex-girlfriend out of your system and wear a mask so that you have zero contact with the artist, it just comes off as stingy and a little rude to those who are going to vote, and add that the artist in the dance parts of the song is sometimes stiff as a stick, and there are many reasons not to vote for this.

This to them being a bad result I don’t think will create any kind of panic among our Swedish friends and next year Melodifestivalen is back with lots of new strong songs that will fight for victory and believe me, nothing would surprise me more if they get a really strong placement next year, because this will be avenged, be sure of that.

Featured image – ESC Covers