Morten Thomassen from Norway decided to write about some of his memories of Eurovision and the Norwegian Eurovision selection. ESC Covers again will publish it after google translating it from Norwegian to English.

Most often, I would now claim that the one, or rather, those who have been allowed to decide have mostly managed to send the right contribution from the Norwegian final to the international competition later in the spring, it has been everything from a handful of people to everyone who has access to a mobile phone.

But, sometimes they manage to really mess it up for themselves and the best example of that was the Norwegian final back in 1989.

Here there were nine songs that were the first to fight for a place in the super final where there was only room for three songs and the final was packed with well-known artists such as Tor Endresen, Rune Rudberg, Kari Gjærum, Jahn Teigen and Kate Gulbrandsen, but in that yard , which for the occasion was Stavanger Forum, there was little help to get for possible celebrity status.

Someone who especially in the 80s had a good grasp of creating a catchy MGP melody was Jahn Teigen and this year was no exception either and the song “Optimist” took most of them by storm and the best proof of that is that the song is still alive and well in most minds, that can hardly be said of any of the other songs that were included this year.

When the presenter Øystein Bache was to read out which three songs had gone to the super final as the 5 juries consisting of 5 people, but in other words a total of 25 pieces, all hell broke loose.

Because when Jahn Teigen was not among those who were called out, the pipe concert of the ages broke out and the reactions were possibly even stronger than those we experienced in Trondheim during the voting scandal in 2020.

As the man of the audience Jahn Teigen was, he ran out into the hall and accepted the people’s tribute and never before has an MGP broadcast been closer to a total breakdown, but in the end they somehow got on even though the air had probably gone out of the balloon by many and when the home favorite Britt-Synnøve Johansen won, it was probably met with a shrug of the shoulders by many, even though the vote was a trill where the song “Venners Nærhet” did not win until after the last vote, the song was in last place in the super final before the so-called The professional jury had its say.

I’ve probably heard some rumors that Jahn Teigen was not necessarily equally liked by everyone and it could possibly be that some thought that he might have participated a little too many times in the MGP and with his three international participations might have used up his quota then .

Now, we never found out how close Jahn Teigen was to a finals place this year, but I think a lot of people feel that Mr. Teigen missed out on something that I’m pretty sure would have been his best placing in an international final, if it had come there, whatever a Schlager with a capital S is the song, it is a truth without modifications.

Even me in South Africa knows OPTIMIST and love it. 1989 had some great songs, of which 2 (Switzerland and Portugal) are higher on my liking list than Optimist would have been, but a 3rd place are still great.

Featured image – Wikipedia