Ok, so what are Denmark doing this year? As with recent years, it’ll be one big final. Although this year there are slightly less songs competing – eight.
Is last year’s act returning? Ben & Tan are alas not returning for 2021.
How does it all work? This year, embracing chaos and all that comes with it, DR have elected to drop the jury vote and put the decision solely in the hands of the Danish public. From the eight songs, viewers will vote for their top three. And then later in that same show, those three will form a ‘super final’, and Danes will vote again for the Melodi Grand Prix 2021 winner.
When? Saturday, March 6th, 20:00 CET.
What are the songs like? Let’s have a listen shall we?…..
Chief 1 & Thomas Buttenschøn – ‘Højt Over Skyerne’
(Chief 1, Thomas Buttenschøn Nermin Harambasic)
Two successful musicians in their own right getting together for a joy-filled collab to serve the Danes some feelgood factor for one night in March. The result is an undeniably upbeat, up-tempo take on the infamous Motown sound of yesteryear. The Danish Melodi Grand Prix voters are notorious for their love of something a bit MOR, but surely (hopefully) this is far too middling even for them.
Claudia Campagnol – ‘Abracadabra’
(Louis Jarto, Melanie Wehbe, Emil Adler Lei)
On paper, this is the most eye-opening of songwriter credits – have we ever had a co-writer of the previous year’s Danish winner (Lei) team up with a co-writer of the previous year’s Swedish winner (Wehbe) before? Despite the showmanship of the song title, production trickery is kept to a minimum here. ‘Abracadabra’ instead presents itself as a minimal piano ballad that builds slightly throughout – allowing the spotlight to remain on the beauty of the vocal and composition.
The Cosmic Twins – ‘Silver Bullet’
(Gisli Gislason, Rasmus Duelund, August Emil, Lise Cabble)
Twin brothers Alec and Chris deliver a song that brings to mind two other Nordic male duos that have tried their hand at heading to Eurovision – namely The Lovers of Valdaro and (if you’re a little bit older) Man Meadow. ‘Silver Bullet’ is grandiose electropop that doesn’t shy away from being camp – theatrically so. It works – ‘Silver Bullet’ in one of our favourites of the bunch on first listen.
Emma Nicoline – ‘Står Lige Her’
(Emma Nicoline, Jeppe Pilgaard, Jacob Jørgensen)
A mid-tempo epic that heads back to the ’80s to borrow from both the decade’s synthpop and its stadium rock. It’s not just the production that has been taken care of, however – the melody on this may well be the strongest of the whole line-up.
Fyr & Flamme – ‘Øve Os På Hinanden’
(Laurits Emanuel)
Something of an anamoly in the line-up, in that here we have an act that actually had a couple of hit singles in 2020. With ‘Øve Os På Hinanden’, Fyr & Flamme cross synthwave with a little bit of schlager – namely early ABBA. Needless to say, we’re already obsessed with this one.
Jean Michel – ‘Beautiful’
(Clara Sofie Fabricius, Johannes Nymark, Andreas Jensen, Jesper Hjersing Sidelmann)
What starts off as a fairly run-of-the mill song encouraging you to switch up your self-esteem, does in fairness soon switch up its own journey – with its production soon morphing into something that’s at least interesting. The lyrics, however, just aren’t interesting enough. And the song seems like it would be better placed over the end credits of a straight-to-streaming Disney film, as opposed to a song competition to select Denmark’s representation on a massive global stage. Still, if the kiddies gravitate towards any song on the night, it’ll be this one. And they’ll be all the better for it after taking those reassuring lyrics to heart.
Mike Tramp – ‘Everything Is Alright’
(Mike Tramp)
The old rock legend is back for another stab at winning Denmark’s Melodi Grand Prix (which he won back in 1978 as part of the group Mabel). ‘Everything Is Alright’ is indeed alright – perfectly pleasant, radio-friendly, country-tinged, mid-tempo fodder. Oh dear – our MOR alarm bells are ringing again – Denmark is potentially gonna go WILD for this shining beacon of mediocrity.
Nanna Olivia – ‘Hvileløse Hjerter’
(Anna David, Nicolai Levring, Casper Sørensen)
“A mental peptalk” is how Nanna describes this song. Well we certainly hope it sounds a lot more interesting in Danish than it does in English. Because Christ…
