Eyes wide open for the Finns

We had one of our many WTF moments during the national final season after our first listen to what the Finns had selected for Baku. She actually sings in Swedish? And yes we know it’s an official language in Finland, but only spoken by a small minority. And isn’t this a yawnathon of epic proportions? A gigantic kiss goodbye to a ticket to the final, because no-one outside Finland would get the first thing about this strange and dreary ballad? We didn’t even bother to listen through the whole song, we sort of just immediately wrote it off as chance-less.

Then we had a second listen, and something happened. Suddenly it dawned on us that this is quite possibly one of the strongest entries in the first semi-final. Which consequently gave us another WTF moment. How is it possible to change ones mind so quickly? It gave us a tingly and weird sensation of being one of the chosen few that are let in to knowing a secret. That we get something few other people understand. Which is really bad for collecting points with the TV-viewers of course, but it might fare well with the juries and manage to escape from a weak semi after all.

We will support Finland wholeheartedly in Baku, and for those of you that didn’t manage to come past a first listen, do yourself a favor and reconsider! This is a wonderful, poetic and soft ballad, beautifully contrasted by the harsh sounding Swedish-Finnish accent of Pernilla Karlsson. We are surprised that the Finns selected an entry in Swedish, but by all means pleasantly surprised. We feel privileged that we for once are able to understand the lyrics of a Finnish entry performed in a national language, but Pernilla’s sincere performance will hopefully translate across linguistic borders. It did so in Finland, so why not in the rest of Europe?