Described by fans as “fun”, “interesting” and “consistent”, Norway is edging closer to that elusive Eurovision win. Together with Norwegian experts, Callum Rowe investigates why the country has been so near, yet so far. 

“Step one: believe in it and sing it all day long. Step two: just roll with it.” That’s how you write a song, apparently. There isn’t, however, a formula to win Eurovision, and Norway knows that. The country has, however, crafted the most enviable record of any country that hasn’t claimed the Eurovision crown in the last decade. 

After seeing his country endure a dismal run of form through 2010-2012 which involved a highest placing in Grand Finals of just 20th, the man in charge of Norway’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest, Per Sundnes, resigned. Broadcaster NRK was left with a big void. After all, Sundnes had been an ever-present part of Norway’s participation in the contest for a number of years, and oversaw Alexander Rybak’s victory in 2009. 

NRK approached Vivi Stenberg, a television producer with a background in music journalism and promotion, to turn around Norway’s Eurovision fortunes. Her first mission was to match the music of the country’s selection show, Melodi Grand Prix, to what was happening in the wider music scene in Norway. “Norwegian popular music was taking off, so it was important to make sure Melodi Grand Prix mirrored that,” Stenberg says. “I was working very consciously to get a hold of the best producers and songwriters,” she adds. 

And straight away, she got one of the best Norway had to offer. Karin Park – an award-winning singer-songwriter – submitted what would become Norway’s 2013 Eurovision song, I Feed You My Love, to NRK. “I remember where I sat when I heard it for the first time. It gave me goosebumps straight away,” Stenberg remembers. Electronic band Datarock and Hank von Hell, the frontman of Norwegian rock band Turbonegro, were also lured to participate in Melodi Grand Prix, but it was I Feed You My Love that won. 

“I said, ‘You have to listen to the song, it’s fucking great’.”

Vivi Stenberg

Maragret Berger was suggested to perform the song by Gisle Stokland, the editor of one of Norway’s music tastemaker websites at the time, who was part of Stenberg’s selection committee which was carefully put together to include journalists, radio hosts and music producers. Berger wasn’t a shoo-in to say yes to the song having turned down offers to perform at Melodi Grand Prix in the past. “She’d been asked many times before, but it was the way I asked her that made her say yes. I said, ‘You have to listen to the song, it’s fucking great’. It was personal and sincere,” Stenberg says. With a song crafted, in part, by Park, and performed by Berger, the rest is history. The song secured fourth place at Eurovision in and got Norway out of a dreadful rut. “The whole experience was perfect,” Berger says. 

2014 was an opportunity for Norway to kick on. Behind the scenes in the preparation for Melodi Grand Prix, the stars were beginning to align for one man. After singing the demo of Hank von Hell’s Melodi Grand Prix track, No One, the year before, Carl Espen tried his luck again with Silent Storm, written by Josefin Winther who was also responsible for No One. Stenberg remembers being struck by Espen’s “incredibly beautiful” voice and invited him in for an audition. What happened? “He was absolutely terrible. He was so nervous and didn’t have self-confidence. He was scared to death and his voice cracked,” Stenberg says. Having not been lucky enough the year before and fluffing his audition, Espen was invited back by Stenberg “on the merits of a very good song”. Things went much better and he was selected for MGP, which he won. He took Silent Storm to Eurovision and bagged eighth place overall. 

Towards the back end of 2014, NRK received a half-finished demo of a track called A Monster Like Me, consisting of just a prelude, a verse and a chorus. Stenberg’s musical nouse sniffed out the potential after it made her “stop in my tracks” and worked on coaxing the author, Kjetil Mørland, to sing the song he’d penned after he’d initially been reluctant to do so. Mørland eventually agreed and invited Debrah Scarlett to perform it as a duet with him. The pair were frontrunners to win Eurovision for a while, but eventually came eighth. 

After putting her “heart, soul, mind, network and credibility” into the job, Stenberg decided to call it quits and left her role as Musical Director of Melodi Grand Prix after the 2015 contest. She had found three songs that, in her own words, “all deserve to belong in the Norwegian songbook”.

A pair of Karlsens stepped up to fill vacancies at Melodi Grand Prix’s top table; Jan Fredrik Karlsen became the new Music Director and Stig Karlsen became Project Manager. 

The pair’s first year at the helm didn’t yield a competitive result. Norway crashed out of the Semi-Final stage of Eurovision in Stockholm. Agnete was the performer and Icebreaker was the song, but only one of those things was the issue. “I love the artist, but I don’t think the song was good enough. We didn’t put enough effort into finding the right song,” Stig Karlsen admits. Agnete was battling illnesses that didn’t allow her to commit to the Eurovision experience, so Karlsen remains pragmatic about the real victory for Norway that year: “It was a win for her to be able to go on that stage and perform the song for so many people. We shared that victory with her.” 

2017 saw Norway marry itself with success once again. Music producer Jowst narrowly beat a song written by the frontman of Wig Wam, Åge Sten Nilsen, to win Melodi Grand Prix, and continued on an upward trajectory from then on. Grab The Moment – sung by the uncredited Aleksander Walmann – features trailblazing (by Eurovision’s standards) vocal distortion which had to be cleared by the EBU before it was confirmed as eligible for Eurovision. It was quite an unnecessary hurdle, but it proved NRK was happy and willing to push the boundaries at the contest. Jowst’s participation yielded 10th in the Grand Final. 

“If you really want great songs, artists and songwriters, you have to go out and get them.”

Stig Karlsen

Ahead of the 2018 season, Stig Karlsen was promoted to Music Director following the resignation of Jan Fredrik Karlsen in mid-2017. Karlsen approached his new double-headed job with a vision – similar to Stenberg’s – to get Norway’s best songwriters and producers involved. An integral key to this was Melodi Grand Prix songwriting camps. Songwriting camps aren’t a novel idea, but camps set up specifically to host musicians writing music for Melodi Grand Prix were at the time. “If you just pick from the open submission, you’re not going to get enough songs. If you really want great songs, artists and songwriters, you have to go out and get them,” Karlsen says. 

Alexander Rybak was selected as a participant in Melodi Grand Prix in 2018. His undeniable star power saw him secure more than double the amount of votes than any other participant in the competition and secure the ticket to represent his country for the second time in a decade. At the contest in Portugal, Rybak’s result seemed anomalous. He won his Semi-Final by 12 points, but could only manage a result of 15th in the Grand Final. It wasn’t the result that NRK hoped for, but better things lay ahead. 

In 2019, Norway suffered a bittersweet result. KEiiNO – a group that infuses electro pop with Sámi folk – languished in 18th place after the juries’ votes in the Grand Final had been delivered. Nobody expected what came next. Host Bar Refaeli teed up the excitement, saying: “Norway. Are you ready? Because you got…” and after a pause that felt like a lifetime, she said: “291 points!”. Expo Tel Aviv erupted as the country rocketed to the top of the leaderboard. At the close of the show, KEiiNO were ranked 6th, but had televoters alone decided the result of the contest, Norway would have won Eurovision. This revealed a unique relationship between Norway and Eurovision juries. 

Emerging from the pandemic in 2021, KEiiNO tried their luck at Melodi Grand Prix once again, but came in second place. Tix was arguably the biggest star in the Norwegian music scene when he triumphed at the expense of KEiiNO, but the first chapter in his Melodi Grand Prix story was written years earlier. 

“Tix was contacting me for years trying to get involved in Melodi Grand Prix, and I was ignoring it,” Karlsen remembers. In his formative years as a musician, Tix was known for his exploration in the Norwegian russemusikk genre, a genre characterised by lurid and explicit lyrics; something not exactly suitable for a family TV show. But as time moved on and Tix matured, his appeal widened and it was Karlsen who was “knocking on his door”. Tix answered and won hearts with his song Fallen Angel and the story that went with it. “He was able to get screentime to tell his story, and his story is impactful,” Jowst says. 

“He didn’t get the result we hoped for in the Grand Final, but we made an iconic moment with Tix and I’m really proud of that.”

Stig Karlsen

In Melodi Grand Prix, he was able to tell the audience about his struggles with mental health problems, but at Eurovision he wasn’t afforded the time. He finished 18th. However, the real success was Tix removing his trademark Round Metal Ray-Ban sunglasses which revealed involuntary tics which are synonymous with Tourettes syndrome. Karlsen echoes the pragmatism he had about Agnete’s personal victory five years prior. “He didn’t get the result we hoped for in the Grand Final, but we made an iconic moment with Tix and I’m really proud of that.” 

“Sometimes I feel artists aren’t allowed to have fun in Eurovision.”

Carl-Henrik Wahl

In 2022, Norway saw another telling disparity between the points awarded by televoters and juries with one-of-a-kind duo Subwoolfer and their song Give That Wolf A Banana. The story started in 2021 when producer Carl-Henrik Wahl and singer-songwriters Ben Adams and Gaute Ormåsen were together at a Melodi Grand Prix songwriting camp. A singer they were due to write with couldn’t attend due to illness, so Wahl suggested they have some fun and do something totally different. One thing led to another and a song about wolves and a banana was born. “Stig didn’t have the words to describe it when he first heard it. He just said he needed the song,” Wahl remembers. Juries at Eurovision awarded Subwoolfer just 36 points, but televoters awarded them 146 points. “Sometimes I feel artists aren’t allowed to have fun in Eurovision,” Wahl argues. 

Norway’s most recent Eurovision contribution was also written at one of the Melodi Grand Prix camps. Alessandra and Queen of Kings came fifth at Eurovision, but once again there was a voting disparity. The Eurovision televoters gave her four times as many points as the juries. 

In the six Grand Finals Norway has reached under Karlsen’s reign, the country has received 797 points from televoters, and just 203 points from the juries. It’s a glaring gulf that Karlsen and his wider team are more than aware about. To get close to winning Eurovision again, the broadcaster needs to work out how to please juries without compromising the appeal of its entries to televoters. Jowst – who actually bagged more points from juries than televoters in 2017 – reckons he knows what the issue is: “The focus has been on finding a song with the X factor, and songs with the X factor are very public friendly, but not jury friendly.” 

The secret to improving Norway’s chances of winning Eurovision may lie in securing big stars from the Norwegian music scene. “I’m surprised that established Norwegian artists don’t participate. I’m just waiting for them to realise how big an opportunity Melodi Grand Prix is,” Berger says. Sigrid, one of Norway’s most successful pop stars, is a fan of Eurovision and Melodi Grand Prix, and Karlsen is “sure she will be part of it one day”. Whether this is the secret to success or not, there are barriers to this becoming the norm like there are in Denmark. “A lot of mainstream artists are afraid to lose the national final,” Jowst believes. 

Finding success is not straightforward, and Norway’s record proves it. Winning Eurovision is the obvious goal, but one other thing remains important for Karlsen: “We need to make sure the music is the soundtrack of people’s lives.”

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