It’s easy to think of Finland as one of the more successful Eurovision participants in recent years because of the huge impact of Lordi’s victory in 2006, but you have to go back as far as 1989 before you find another top ten result for the Nordic nation. As such, the 11th place achieved by Softengine last year can be seen as a minor triumph.

One certainly cannot accuse the Finns of playing it safe in terms of trying to repeat that success. Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät (PKN) are the band who will fly the blue and white flag in Vienna, and they have already generated plenty of headlines beyond the world of ESC fandom. The band members all have learning disabilities and their musical style is an uncompromising blast of legitimately unfiltered punk – something quite different from the usual Eurovision fare.

Aina mun pitää is barely a minute and a half in length, and all the better for it. No time is wasted in getting to the point, to the extent that some fans seem convinced that the entry breaks a non-existent rule on the minimum length an ESC song is required to be. Whereas all it really means is an extra 90 seconds of broadcast time for ORF to fill with some kind of misguided interval act. Probably involving drumming.

My verdict is that it’s very hard to judge this song by the same standards as the rest of the competition, partly because of the potential “sympathy vote” factor, and partly because it’s musically so different to everything else. But what does that mean in terms of results? Well, there’s often an entry that gathers a lot of the early headlines, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into scoreboard success. Think about Israeli band Teapacks, for example, whose controversial song Push The Button was enough to get them on the BBC news early in the 2007 on-season, but who largely sank without a trace in that year’s mammoth semi-final.

So will the advance publicity help PKN? In a televoting-only semi-final I’d put good money on them qualifying, but the professional juries could end up sinking their chances – if not on the Tuesday night, then certainly by the time Saturday rolls around. As for me, I’m glad they’re there for a bit of variety, for all I don’t really know what to make of the whole thing. I just hope it doesn’t end up feeling like a waste of everyone’s time – even if it is just a minute and a half of it.

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