Every year there are a couple of songs that happen to be huge fan favorites, but when I listen to them, not only do I dislike them (that can happen quite a bit, but I will understand why other people like them), I also really struggle to see their appeal. This always brings up interesting prediction challenges – we’ve had enough fan favorites that have done very well, and enough that have absolutely died on the night. So, when I don’t “get” a song, do I trust my own gut feeling? Do I trust that everyone else is seeing something I don’t? This is the predicament in which I find myself when discussing the Norwegian entry this year.

Following their respectable 8th placing from last year, this year the Norwegians went for a somewhat odd downsizing of their national final, reducing the selection to only one night and 11 songs, but adding an orchestra, which provided some unforgettable moments (in a fun and positive way, not the Anoixi way). We got one of the closest voting sequences of the entire national final season, but at the end it was the overwhelming competition pre-favorite, A Monster Like Me, performed by a (yet another) duo, Mørland & Debrah Scarlett which narrowly grabbed the ticket for Vienna.

A Monster Like Me is a moody and dark ballad, helped in its studio version by the interesting color of voice of both its lead singers, and giving a bit of an alternative edge to what is essentially a fairly simple pop song that thinks it is bigger than what it actually is. The song becomes more and more overdramatic as it goes, and it becomes worse in the process, ending up with a last minute that is purely overblown schmaltz. The quirky videoclip manages to distract from that part of the song by staging a glamorous food fight, a feat that unfortunately will not be replicated on the Eurovision stage.

To the credit of the song and its performers, it does have a strong orchestration and a modern vibe, which should help enough viewers to avoid the flaws of the song. And to be fair, a lot of people do like a good dosage of drama.

My verdict? My personal feelings aside, I think there are two main factors that threaten its fan favorite status. The first one is the live performance. The national final performances were a letdown compared to the expectations of the song, hence only just edging their competition to win the final. They have no chemistry at all, although this is the least of their problems. Their biggest problem, which didn’t seem to improve in recent live performances, is Debrah. She doesn’t manage to carry the vocals in the live performance in a remotely convincing way, and in a song like this, engaging your audience is crucial, and singing in the right key is always helpful, especially in ballads. Luckily for them, he is a lot better and he is the one opening the song, so he might just get enough people interested to carry them through. I am also sure this will have a fitting usage of a striking stage and lights to try and overcome the song’s shortcomings.

Its other issue is that to me it sounds like a song that will be appreciated in the West and North, but will be too cold and emotionally detached for the East and South of Europe. Last year, also writing about Norway, I suggested their song had a similar problem – and it indeed ended up being ignored by almost anywhere outside the North and West. I suspect this year’s entry will have a similar fate. If Debrah manages to improve her vocals and confidence by the end of rehearsals, though, the points it will get from their side of Europe should give them enough to improve last year’s result by a few places. Even if I will probably still skip it when I rewatch the competition.

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