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.

Not since 2004 have our Latvian friends performed a song only in Latvian and as recently as 2023 did they have Latvian phrases in their song and what both of these songs had in common was that they did not qualify for the final, so in that sense it was a never-so-small curse that was broken when the girl group Tautumeitas made it to the final with the song “Bur Man Laimi”.

Bring me happiness means the title and it possibly did, because who would have thought that they would take second place in their semi-final ahead of countries like Finland, Greece and Austria who beat them when they got to the final.

You can’t help but wonder who and not least how many people vote in the semi-finals when you get results like this, because in the final the Latvian girls were almost three times as well liked by the jury as by the people, strange results in other words and they got a whole three 12’pointers from the juries in the final, so nice catch that in addition to the same score from the Lithuanian people.

Music with an ethnic feel is one of the regular entries in our beloved competition, so the challenge then becomes more to make the performance something that can captivate those who vote and there I would say that Annemarija, Asnate, Aurelija, Gabriela, Kate and Laura did their job quite right, the song was of the elven kind and they appeared like elves on stage, in other words a performance that was simply amazing.

Throw into the mix that the vocals were impeccable, if anything is to be criticized, one might react a little to the fact that the costumes appeared a bit too revealing for some people’s taste, but what do I know about the dress code of elves, nothing.

This was also the 6th best position ever for this country, they have now participated in the final 12 times and have lost the final 13 times, so it is safe to bet that they will get a draw on this statistic next year.

Featured image – Sarah Louise Bennett – EBU