Norway

Hold On Be Strong Maria Haukaas Storeng

One of the most common mistakes that Eurovision fans make when forecasting the fate of the countries taking part is to assume that because a song stands out in a national final it will stand out in the contest itself. Overlooking the fact that the contexts are very different is easy to do, especially if you are enthusiastic about an entry and want it to do well. It's something I've been guilty of in the past: when asked to predict who I thought would win in 2004, for example, there were only two songs I felt had something about them I could envisage being reprised in a rain of glitter, and I was wrong on both counts. One was Sweden, which ended up 5th (so not far off there). The other was Norway's High, which brought the country its third last place - and worse, its first outright wooden spoon - in less than a decade. As predictions go... well, it speaks for itself.

And yet as part of the its national final, which was in fact a high quality affair that year, there was something to the song that I felt made it stand out from the competition, rendering a home victory perfectly sensible. And obviously a couple of hundred thousand Norwegians agreed with me. Where I tripped up was in assuming that the same logic applied once you stripped the entry of its national winner status and threw it in with the other thirty-however many entries that had made it to Istanbul. I had failed to realise that the quality of a song marking it out as the winner of a national final does not necessarily translate to the contest. It's something I've taken on board since though, and is the reason I am treading carefully this year: Norway has once again produced a winner I love, but which many others seem to either be left cold by or actively dislike.

As part of my more tempered approach I have looked at the song in the light other people are placing it in to see whether their arguments hold any water; suffice it to say that nine times out of ten they are so subjective they couldn't argue their way out of a paper bag. You can cast all the aspersions you like - the 'fact' that the singer is an "Idols reject" or has "big thighs" has nothing to do with the song or its chances of qualification and success. Still, having listened to Hold On Be Strong many times in order to keep things in balance and search for its alleged failings, I have never really found any. The closest I came to anything worthy of criticism was the line at the very end of the lyrics which seems to suggest the entire song is being addressed to some young slip of a thing by someone much older than Ms Storeng, lending it a sense of condescension that grates with the realism of the rest of the lyrics.

Another aspect of the lyrics (or rather the way they are sung) that seems to be troubling a lot of listeners is the clunkiness in the opening bars. This was in fact one of the things that attracted me to the song in the first place: it seems to me to be perfectly in keeping with the tortured incomprehension of the story behind the music that the words would be given an almost stumbling delivery, tremulous, as if the girl is struggling to string her sentences together to express how she feels. Generally I feel that Maria's voice is just right for the song: if it were squeakier you'd just want to slap her one for being so self-absorbed and whiny. As is she has a kind of empathy about her performance vocally that lends the song weight rather than rendering it twee.

In terms of arrangement Hold On Be Strong is another song I would love to be able to listen to as individual tracks. The combination of guitar, strings and brass punctuating the bass, piano and percussion is economical but very effective and subtly works to produce a musical picture of what the lyrics are saying. Structurally the song is also one of the most solid entries this year: it has a clearly defined beginning and end (the latter of which at least the three minute rule means is often lacking in Eurovision) and natural progression that does not have to resort to a key change to effect or signpost its climax.

As the ham in the sandwich between Slovenia's Rebeka Dremelj and Poland's Isis Gee and in a mid-semi run of girly songs only interrupted by the unconventional entries from Ireland and Bosnia & Herzegovina, Norway may nevertheless struggle to make enough of an impression on viewers to see them through to the final. It is sufficiently different to the songs it is bookended by to stand out in that sense, but the strength of the field it will find itself among in Belgrade is arguably greater than its competition in the national final, and the audience altogether different. I hope the fact - or at least my contention - that it is a well-produced entry in the hands of a capable performer is enough to convince people to vote for it. It is, in my opinion, one of the most coherent songs in this year's contest.