Morten Thomassen from Norway started reported on the final positions of the 37 entries in the 2023 Eurovision song contest. ESC Covers google translated it from Norwegian to English.

This is a blog entry and represents only writer Morten Thomassen’s own views.

With Norway’s eighth best position, a place Alessandra shares with Karoline Krüger, Silje Vige and the then-named Maria Haukaas Storeng, one must be quite sullen not to be satisfied with 5th place.

When we also know that the song “Queen Of Kings” captured the audience’s bronze place, only beaten by the two songs that came at the top of the final results list, it does not make the efforts of our Norwegian-Italian friend any better and there are not many Norwegian artists who have been in the top 10 on the British hit list, so this year’s song was certainly the best contribution we could have sent this year, however, it must be mentioned that in the semi-final where only the audience voted we “only” came in 6th place, so obviously not a Tuesday song this.

As with KEiiNO, it took a stingy jury that only thought our song deserved 52 points to deny us a place on the podium in the end, the people were actually over four times more happy with our song.

In recent years it has become a bit obvious that we are not exactly sending jury food out into Europe at this annual event and that is and will be our biggest challenge in the years to come to find out.

Most people probably remember that Miss Mele actually won both the foreign jury and the Norwegian people in the Norwegian final, why did the jury’s love for this song disappear when it came to the international stage, one wonders.

Well, first of all, the international jury that voted in the Norwegian final chose between the songs that were available, if they really thought that all the songs there were closer to mediocre than good, in other words the best of the mediocre won.

Well, say what you will, Alessandra as an artist is anything but mediocre, what a firework of an artist, with a confidence that far more experienced artists can only dream of, in that sense everything was in place for a better placement than the one we got, for NRK constantly says that the goal is victory and with those glasses on, a 5th place can only be seen as acceptable.

I have mentioned that Alessandra should still be able to be placed in the booth, a relatively unknown artist, but she will probably grow out of that booth quite quickly.

But, this inexperience probably meant that the show she put on was seen by the jury as too sad, old-fashioned and too dark, I think that an experienced artist would have demanded more changes from the Norwegian final to the stage in Liverpool since the content of the toolbox there was quite a lot bigger than the one we had during the Norwegian final.

Alessandra herself said that she let NRK decide the costume and the show and didn’t really get too lost in it, perhaps a natural choice for her, but if you put the winner’s glasses on, not as smart in my opinion.

Because at least from the eyes of the jury, the show simply didn’t stand out as much and you only need to compare it with the song from Israel, which in many ways is in the same musical street as Norway, it got 3 times as many points from the juries and a lot of that is probably due to a more up-to-date show with dancers, among other things, who were much more involved in the show on stage than the partially invisible dancers Norway had with them.

Vocally, Alessandra had some small missteps at the jury test on Friday, but they were so small that I doubt that it was the main reason why the juries scored from them in terms of points, and in the final itself there was little to complain about both the vocals and the radiance she showed the stage.

Anyway, Alessandra made the most of her performance, and has every reason to be super-satisfied with her effort, that she wasn’t allowed to present her song in a way that could catch the jury’s attention in a better way is a responsibility others can take on.

In any case, it’s no use crying over spilled milk, but I sincerely hope that those responsible at NRK see what they could do better and make an effort in this area for the artist in question who will sing our contribution in 2024 in the city of Malmö, which we Norwegian fans have very good memories of the last time our beloved circus was there.

Featured image – Corinne Cumming – E B U