Yodeling probably has a special place in someone’s heart. But definitely not in ours:
Wanna sing and shout? That is the question posed by Alex Florea in the beginning of Romania’s entry this year. Our answer to that is usually a clear and unequivocal ‘yes’ in this competition, but that’s about to change. We mean, who really wants to yodel? Apart from completely wasted people with no sense of their own limitations when it comes to moving freely between chest voice and falsetto? And they usually don’t show up until the after party at Euro Club, when it is way too late to send in your SMS votes.
Alpine yodeling is an “art” mastered only by sheep herders in Switzerland and Austria during the 1800s, and it didn’t even sound very good then. In fact, the main purpose of yodeling was not to sound great in a music competition at all, but to call your stock or to tell others where you were. Maybe that is why Switzerland originally turned this song down, them knowing we’re in Kyiv, 2017. Funny then, that it showed up in Romania. Did those guys get completely lost in Transylvania or did they lose a bet against the Swiss in the worst way possible?
We wouldn’t know, but we fear we have to take some of the blame. For several years now, Norway have been doing all we can to help Romania win this, lending them our most precious Ovi Jacobsen from Bryne, knowing he easily would have placed Norway in top 10, but thinking less fortunate countries with no Alexander Rybak should stand a chance and that Paula Selling also needed a friend. No wonder, then, that Ovi has become a star in Romania. In fact so much so that they placed him in the jury this year. And maybe he thought this was payback time? Because surely, he must have voted the yodeling through only in order for Norway to reach a place in the final?
Either way we are telling you, this song most certainly should stay out of the glorious Saturday. Call your stock and go back to the Carpathians, folks. We’ll ask Ovi if he can stick his head through a piano or something next year instead. Or even withdraw your right to Ovi if you cannot make better use of him than this.

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