DENMARK

The Danish Final was held at the Gigantium in Aalborg on February 7th, hosted by Esben Bjerre & Jacob Riising. The winner was chosen by  5 regional "expert" juries (50%) & SMS voting (50%). The winning song was "The way you are" by Anti Social Media.

This year's Dansk Melodi Grand Prix followed a similar process to those of previous years although instead of a simple jury panel the 'experts' were split regionally 5 ways. Then the public votes were split and points allocated based on percentages, as in the Melodifestivalen final, which ended up with a close and exciting end result.

The song is a 60's tinged pop boyband song, in a similar vein to something McFly might have done years ago. The tempo of the song is quite gentle and doesn't really pack the punch of a standard Eurovision entry. This all said there is a definite structure to the song and a lot of repetition and has quite a simple melody which you can find yourself humming along to at a moments notice. But this is not a typical Eurovision song - in a bad way. It doesn't really have much character, hook or oomph to it. It is the proverbial vanilla and the antidote to anything Conchita-ish.

The band and whole act doesn't seem to fit the song. Their name suggests that they should be angry, grungy, a bit wild - yet they look far too well behaved and conformist and it makes you wonder if you have missed something. Besides that, the set up (as is) is quite distracting. A lot of focus is put on the lead singer however this can make it at times feel more like a solo performance. His vocal ability is quite good and seemed to be able to interact with the crowd and the camera quite well. There is also the distraction of the two female backing singers. They take up not only a lot of song time but a lot of camera time and you start to wonder who is *really* the star of the show here.

They won't do much to the song but they need to do a hell of a lot of work to the performance quality. Basically 'the band' is totally redundant as all they did was play their instruments and move about a bit - only one of them used a microphone. Considering the song relies heavily on backing vocals they either need to start singing or they need to be got rid of. The backing singers need to be much more co-ordinated and better placed on the stage. The back drop needs to be much stronger and NOT to end with the title on the back wall.... If there is one thing about the song I can be certain of and that is you can't really miss what the song is called.

The problem with this year's Dansk Melodi Grand Prix was that all 10 songs were utter rubbish and I would be able to find fault with any song they would have put through. But this song is just so nondescript it makes me scratch my head with wonder how it won (in retrospect, the massive jury wank helped). It's so poor it even makes me think "Talking to you" and "All night Long" are actually not a bad songs. Plus, when you look at their draw in SF1 you could see this drowning in a eastern European sea of craziness and sink without a trace. Right now this has no chance in hell of qualifying based on the fact that the countries yet to select in SF1 only have to choose something half decent to be better. If it does qualify it will be bottom 3 in the final.

ARTIST - Anti Social Media

SONG - The way you are

MUSIC - Remee S. Jackman, Chief 1

LYRICS - Remee S. Jackman