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.

Now we go to the country that some hope will win soon, but others fear will win soon, a victory for this country would create a situation that I prefer not to talk about until it eventually happens, but that this country is at the forefront of the list of countries that will soon win is quite obvious and this year they were actually closer than ever and this even though they “only” came in third place in the telephone vote as they have come in second and first place years respectively the previous two years.

What Noam Bettan managed with the song “Michelle” was that he was “only” 81 points behind Bulgaria, who led after the juries had had their say, but since the jury and the people agreed on who was best for the first time since 2017, the participant from Israel was unable to get any better than 2nd place, a full 173 points behind first place, which is actually a new record for how far away from first place you are in terms of points ever.

However, the song “Michelle” had a reassuring distance from the song that ended up in third place, so from that point of view it is a deserved placement and musically speaking there is actually not much to complain about, for now that participation is so important to them, they always send artists who deliver the goods, here there is little wiggle in the vocal waltz and the rest of the performance and perhaps it is not so strange that the artist must have practiced all this time with a pipe concert in his ears to be able to deliver under such conditions.

After two power ballads sung by female artists, this time we were served a guy who sang about a somewhat problematic relationship with Michelle and this time the song was in the pop landscape and since Noam is of French descent we were also served parts of the song in French, so a whole three languages ​​were involved this year in other words.

The song had a clear French touch and when the vocals are almost flawless and the stage show is so good, it’s no wonder they do as well as they did. I didn’t quite understand the show myself and in these times one has to wonder how many of the points awarded from the public were for the song and how many were in support of the country the song represented.

Israeli contestants have to live with the fact that there are questions about how many points from the public they actually deserve. Under normal circumstances, I struggle to believe that they could have received so many votes, but that does not detract from the fact that it was once again delivered on stage by an Israeli artist, although I also react here that there is so much singing on tape, a real outlier in our beloved competition.

I would like to believe that Israeli TV will choose to continue with the selection method they have used in recent years, first a final where they choose the artist and then the person in question is allowed to choose the song that will represent their home country, as they have already said that they will participate next year.