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.In fact, our Czech friends had only been to the final 5 times before Daniel Zizka took them there with his song “Crossroads” and many had probably believed and hoped that the number of top-10 placements would double due to this song, but 6th place from 2018 still stands as the best placement for this country.
Countries that rarely or never have national finals can often afford to spend more money on their performance in the ESC and here the guy from this country was no exception, a trip to the hall of mirrors was what we were served and even though it looked cool on TV, we who were sitting in the audience were cheated out of most of the show, a part of the ESC broadcast that I am starting to dislike a bit, those who have paid dearly to watch this live are being cheated a bit during some of the performances.
However, on TV this looked cool, not surprisingly it had to happen that you saw the TV photographer from time to time and unfortunately there was a technical error that caused the TV image to freeze for a few seconds, but I don’t think it had any particular impact on Daniel’s scoring.
Once again, we are served a song that may not be the most exciting if you just listen to it, but with the visual expression chosen for this song, it immediately gains an intensity and empathy that raises it many notches.
And compared to many other artists, the vocal effort was also a lot of steps up, because this guy could sing and he manages to show off the vulnerability in the song in an excellent way, in my opinion, so all credit to him there.
The jury liked what they saw and heard, but strangely enough the people gave this a thumbs down, a measly 9 points was all he got, little, far too little pay for this effort, but perhaps what we saw was a little too dark and gloomy on a Saturday night.
This country is largely focusing on young, up-and-coming artists, and we can probably expect something in that vein next year as well.
Featured image – ESC Covers