When’s it happening? Tomorrow night!
How can I watch? You’ll be able to watch on DR’s website, wherever you are in the world.
How does it all work? Ten songs will be performed, and a public televote and jury vote will be combined to have three songs progress to a super final. Then, solely a new public televote will decide on the winner out of those three.
What are the bookies saying? Well according to them, it’s between two songs – ‘Yes’ and ‘Human’, with ‘Yes’ just edging it in the odds. As far as the bookies are concerned, however, there’s a 70% chance it will be one of those two, with the other eight barely getting a look in.
And what do the streaming stats say? They tell a similar story. ‘Yes’ is in the lead by far with 77k streams, followed by ‘Human’ on 52k. Then, on less than half of ‘Human’s streams are ‘Forget It All’, ‘Bye Bye Heaven’ and ‘Screens’ on 27k, 26k and 25k streams respectively. Everything else is way under.
Well, how exciting it will be to be in that arena! Actually, this morning, Danish broadcaster DR announced that the audience attendance has been cancelled – due to concerns around Coronavirus. So the artists will be performing in an empty arena, solely to TV viewers at home.
Erm… But anyway, here are the ten songs competing tomorrow night, in the order that they’ll perform in;
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Isam B – ‘Bølger’
(Morten Woods, Babak Vakili, Troels Kampmann Kjær)
We’ve always thought that Danish was such a beautiful language. Then we heard Isam B make his way through ‘Bølger’, and honestly we’re not so sure anymore.
Ben & Tan – ‘Yes’
(Emil Adler Lei, Jimmy Jansson, Linnea Deb)
Or to be more precise, YES! Iceland have Of Monsters and Men, Sweden have Smith & Thell, and now Denmark have Ben & Tan for the clap-happy, foot-stomping, HEY-chanting bops. We love this. How could you not? Intrusively catchy (that’s a positive, btw), it gets the job done (and then some) in its alloted three minutes – which is precisely what Eurovision voters require. We hope that Europe gets the shot to say YES say YES say YES in Rotterdam.
Maja og De Sarte Sjæle – ‘Den Eneste Goth i Vejle
(Maja og De Sarte Sjæle)
An adorably kitsch indie song that sounds like it was plucked straight out of the ’90s. It also sounds like it strayed somewhat on its journey somewhere and perhaps ended up in Melodi Grand Prix by accident. However, it’s going to stand out a lot on the night, and if the live performance delivers the bags of charm that the recording does, then it could be a dark horse to take a sneaky win.
Benjamin Kissi – ‘Faith’
(Benjamin Kissi, Gisli Gislason, Frederik Tao Nordsøe Schjoldan)
A fabulous production let down my some atrocious lyrics and backing vocals that sounded so jarringly off-key, we had to turn it off halfway through.
Emil – ‘Ville Ønske Jeg Havde Kendt Dig’
(Esben Svane, Emil Vestergaard Klausen, Gavyn Matthew Bailey, Tim Schou)
A cheery, perfectly pleasant number that we have heard elsewhere a hundred times before and could quite happily never hear again.
Sys Bjerre – ‘Honestly’
(Sys Bjerre, Lasse Lyngbo)
A horribly twee effort about climate change that relies upon a catalogue of cliches thrown together in no discernible order to serve as its lyrics. It’s heart is in the right place, obviously, but the whole thing is at best cringeworthy, and at worst vomit-inducing. Bleurgh.
05: Jamie Talbot – ‘Bye Bye Heaven’
(Tom Oehler, Hampus Eurenius, Aron Blom)
A modern take on classic soul, backed with some big beats and a confident vocal, both of which belie the otherwise soothingly laidback tone to the song. Probably the most contemporary of the ten songs on offer in this final, sounding like it could well be a big hit outside of the context of this contest.
03: Sander Sanchez – ‘Screens’
(Jonas Thander, Liam Craig, Christopher Wortley)
This one has got it all – the kind of song that sounds like it fits onto the radio playlists of today, and that also sounds like it belongs on the Eurovision stage, too. It’s got just the right amount of bang for both, and it’ll be interesting to see if it goes the whole way and manages both, too.
02: Kenny Duerlund – ‘Forget It All’
(Henrik Tala, Mila Falls, Patrik Jean, Kenny Duerlund)
An unapologetically punchy tune that blends a bit of both trip-hop and soul to its sturdy pop frame. It’s big enough to easily fill an (admittedly empty now) arena in Copenhagen in March. And if he can pull off live that same vocal he’s managed in the recording, it could deservedly go all the way to a (hopefully full!) arena in Rotterdam in May.
04: Jasmin Rose feat. RoxorLoops – ‘Human’
(Lise Cabble, Grace Risch, Gavin Jones, Erik Smaaland)
An unflinchingly camp number that piles the Nordic melodies onto some Eastern influences in its production. It makes for an intriguing listen, but one that we took to straight away. And we could well see a lot of Europe responding to it in the same way. Features a key change – which, sorry, it’s details like this that are still very important to us in the context of a Eurovision pre-selection.
