The third heats of both Iceland and Finland’s national finals took place over the weekend. Norway had its first heat.
Iceland threw up a bittersweet result once again, with ‘Lygin Ein’ making the final, and ‘Close To You’ being eliminated from the competition. ‘Close To You’ was the song that we didn’t review last week because RUV only uploaded three songs to their website for some reason. When we heard it though, it was easily one of the best songs of the contest so far. A down tempo jazz-lite track with a fantastic melody beautifully sung by Kristin Osk Wium. The really bad ‘Easy To Fool’ was the other qualifier and the God awful ‘Family’ was sent packing from the contest! This weekend sees the fourth and final Icelandic Heat. The songs are online here; http://www.ruv.is/songvakeppnin/. It’s not a very strong heat unfortunately. Two ballads which aren’t bad (‘Cobwebs’ and ‘I Think The World Of You’) and two uptempo Dr Luke style pop/rock tracks (‘Got No Love’ and ‘Roses’). We were especially interested in ‘Got No Love’ as it’s been composed by (the rather handsome) Örlygur Smári (pictured right), who co-wrote ‘This Is My Life’, the amazing song that Euroband represented Iceland with at last year’s Eurovision. In truth, we were hoping for another club track, but ‘Got No Love’ is still a quality pop song despite the extensive and downright unnecessary guitar worship! Hopefully it should sail through to the final.
In Finland, Jari Sillanpaa (pictured left) qualified directly to the final, predictably and rightfully. Signmark was the other qualifier, with a song that we really don’t like! Janita and Vink made it through to the second chance round which takes place this Friday. They’ll compete against four other acts (Sani, Tiara, Riikka, and Passionworks) and the top two of those six will qualify for the final on Saturday – where they’ll be up against the six acts that have already qualified; Jari Sillanpaa, Signmark, Waldo’s People, Remu, Tapani Kansa, and Kwan. And of those eight, viewers will decide the winner and therefore, the Finnish representative of Eurovision 2009! We’re really hoping that Sani and Riikka qualify from the second chance round. And we’d like either Waldo’s People or Sani to win the whole thing outright and go to Eurovision. That’s not asking too much is it?!
Heat One of Norway’s Melodi Grand Prix took place on Saturday night. You can read our review of all of the songs here; https://www.scandipop.co.uk/?p=351. The results were a mixture of good and bad;
Good
Velvet qualifying to the final
Surferosa qualifying to the 2nd chance round
Espen Hand qualifying to the 2nd chance round
Bad
Thomas Brandbo qualifying to the final
Charite failing to qualify
We’d like to add that girlband Velvet’s performance was just awe inspiring!!! You can see it in its full glory on youtube.
This weekend is the strongest heat of them all! Heat 2 holds our two favourite songs of the entire contest; ‘Find My Girl’ by Alexander Stenerud, and ‘Alt Har En Mening Na’ by Wenche Mhyre. It’ll be a travesty (to us) if they don’t qualify directly to the final. However, they face tough competition from three of the big fan favourites; ‘Butterflies’, ‘Te Stein’, and ‘Yesterday’. Trust us, this is nail biting stuff if you’re into this kind of thing!
