ICELAND

The Icelandic Final was held on March 3rd at Laugardalshöll in Reykjavik, hosted by Ragnhildur Steinunn Jónsdóttir & Jón Jónsson. Before the final there were 2 semi-finals with 3 songs qualifying from each. During the semis all songs were performed in Icelandic but in the final they could be sung in their language of choice. The eventual winner was chosen in 2 rounds of voting - a top 2 was chosen by a jury (50%) and televoting (50%). Then a winner was then chosen solely by televoting. Going to Lisbon is Ari Ólafsson singing “Our Choice”

Ari is on stage with his back to the audience where the backdrop is a kind of purple colour with lights wafting in the air. When he turns round you can see he has a band on stage with him who also do a fair bit of backing singing. When the first chorus starts the backdrop turns to a picture of sky but by the end it turns into a generic dark blue background. Ari is dressed quite snazzily in a tight fitting maroon suit and seems quite smiley throughout. He is a little awkward moving around and sometimes his moves don't quite go with what he is singing.

When the song starts Ari is singing quietly and very low but seems to have a fair bit of control. The first part of the song takes a very long time to get going and it is not until 60 seconds have passed that the song starts. We then have the chorus (proper) twice before going into a jazzy bridge where Ari shows how wide his range is by doing quite a nice falsetto note. There is one more chorus before a slowing down for the ending. The main issue I have with this song is that the lyrics are very stayed and the themes and words used are too soppy to be taken seriously. The tune of the song seems more akin to an ‘80’s charity record.

In the semi-final, this was sung as “Heim” (Home) and he seemed much more confident singing this, however I found his singing voice in the final much stronger I guess a switch back would solve the issues of the bad lyrics but would not be able to paper over the other cracks this song has. This such a poor choice – and in fact the whole Icelandic selection was full of very mediocre songs – but Ari is a good singer so maybe people voted for that when there was a Hobson’s Choice on songs? This is plodding, old fashioned and very, very boring. Yawn.

ARTIST –  Ari Ólafsson

SONG – Our Choice

MUSIC -  Þórunn Erna Clausen

LYRICS - Þórunn Erna Clausen