That’s how you become a star

Time for us to praise our own. Or just another regular day at work, as the Swedes may say:

There are many perks of being Norwegian. We are still not out of oil. There is health care available when we drink too much aquavit. We have at least a couple of days of summer evry year. We still have a kind of democracy and only a few right wing extremists in the government. The men are usually taller than us. And then there’s the biggest perk of them all. We have Alexander Rybak.

You can just forget about it, Belarus. Alexander Rybak is just as much our national treasure as most things you can find in the British Museum belongs to UK. We found him. We made him a star. We get to keep him. He’s our friend and our superstar, our cuddly toy and our shiny object, our average guy in the street and our national icon. No one can play a fiddle like him, no one can entertain like him and no one can make the Norwegians feel so passionate about something, whether they actually like him or not. He’s even an important part of our national defense, as no one can keep our Russian neighbours happy and occupied quite like him.

We actually underestimated Alexander Rybak in our national final, given that his song did sound a little bland in the preview video and the lyrics were a bit too meta. But then he entered that stage in Oslo Spektrum and it all came back to us. The way Alex connects with the audience. His sense of rhythm and movement. His charming smile. He just went “Step one. Believe in it and sing it all day long” and we just went “OK” and that was the end of that story.

Also, we need to talk about the generosity surrounding this guy, and it ‘s not just because he once mentored our 10-year-old jury member through his very difficult time period of having to take violin lessons because his mother wanted him to become a Eurovision star instead of a football player. Our own Alex is just nice to everybody. While the other artists have been busy promoting their own entries the last couple of weeks, he spent his time at home making a video where he plays the violin on top of other artist’s entries so that they sound better. Who does that in a competition? Certainly not many other Norwegians to be completely honest. Guess we really do have to thank Belarus for good influence. Or not.

Anyway. We’ll be waiving our flags with pride in the arena this year. We love you, Alexander Rybak. We’re sorry we ever doubted you. Time for step three: Win Eurovision.

– This one time, in band camp, I stuck…no, sorry that was a bad joke. Let me tell you how you write a better song than me.

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