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.
To the extent that our beloved competition ESC has a mother, it is the Italian San Remo Festival that started a few years before ESC and when the EBU back in the 50s discussed what form of entertainment program they should have together, it was the Italians’ proposal for a music competition that won out, apparently in competition with a circus program, the latter of which would hardly have celebrated its 70th anniversary next year.
The San Remo Festival is such an institution in itself, so it is not an Italian selection for ESC, the winner is only asked if they would like to participate there as well, and some years the winner actually says no to showing their musicality in Europe, and 2025 was such a year.
It was the artist Olly who won, but when he said no, the second placer Lucio Corsi asked him if he wanted to go on a trip to Switzerland in May and fortunately he said yes and it must be said that he narrowly lost to Olly, the latter receiving 23.84% of the votes in the Italian competition while Lucio received 23.39%.
Thus, it was the song “Volevo Essere Un Duro” which means something like “I Want to Be a Tough Guy” and if you look at Mr. Corsi’s appearance you can perhaps understand the title, he appears as a strange little screw and very far from what many would see as tough.
But, toughness comes in many forms and just singing about wishing you were tough now seems like I’m tough so that’s enough and the fact that he had such a down-to-earth and actually pleasant way of performing the song was probably what made many jury members and partly also the audience vote for that song.
The simplest is often the best, they say, and right here it’s true, this guy is clearly used to performing songs on stage in this way, so why mess it up, they thought, maybe, and that mindset took it to a well-deserved 5th place, if you ask me, and vocally there was little to pick on either.
The San Remo festival will most likely be used to find next year’s artist as well and I can already guarantee that it will be a quality song, this country obviously has no choice but to send it.
Featured image – Youtube