IRELAND 2025

The Irish act and song was selected on February 7th. The national final took place during a "Eurosong" special of The Late, Late Show.  The winner was chosen by adding equally weighted scores of public voting, an international jury and an Irish jury. Going to Basel is Emmy with the song "Laika Party".

Emmy Kristiansen is Norwegian and comes from the village of Sande which is south of Oslo. As a child, she sang in a choir called Soul Children. In 2015 she took part in the NRK show Melodi Grand Prix Junior and got all the way to the final. Six years later she entered into Melodi Grand Prix 2021 with the song "Witch Woods" which qualified for the final. She was also a co-writer of the MGP 2024 song "Woman Show" and Citi Zēni's national final song "Ramttai in 2025. Outside of singing, she is very active on TikTok and studies visual communication at the University of Southeast Norway.

Emmy is joined on stage by two female dancers and her brother on keyboard. Emmy confidently joins in with the dancing although the choreography is not exhaustive and the dancers do not take over the show. The costumes are predominantly silver but with blues and pinks in the background. The backdrop also flips between projecting the lyrics, space visuals, an animation of Laika and dancing astronauts. The structure of the song is verse - pre chorus - chorus with a vocalised bridge after each chorus. This runs through twice with an extended outro. The tune is very simple and this twinned with Emmy's very distinctive vocal tone, makes the song incredibly memorable. The lyrics are a little twee, and some of the rhymes are shoe-horned in, but I think this is about the feel of the song rather that its lyrical quality. The use of a historical non-human heroine possibly irons out any problematic issues people may have about known figures (although the only issue I can see is that Laika was Soviet/Russian).

As ever with the Late Late Show, the staging and technical capacity of the studio was basic and these parameters hampered or curtailed the 6 performances. "Laika Party" has appeal, especially with younger viewers. I see this song being used a lot on social media and becoming meme worthy. Also, Emmy really wants to be at Eurovision and will have support in the fan community as well as family support on stage. Now that the semis are 100% televote, this is almost definitely going through - not because it is an amazing song - because it is the kind of stereotypical catchy/funny/earwormy song people vote for. Although the presentation was safe and predictable, it was a tight and proficient 3 minutes. So, with more space, potentially more dancers and scope for more visual trickery this could scale up. On the negative side, many may see this as being a thin and gimmicky song and categorised as a 'joke entry'. This might end up being a big winner in terms of publicity and viral value but I don't think this will be troubling the top of the scoreboard in May.

ARTIST - Emmy

SONG - Laika Party

WRITING/PRODUCTION CREDITS - T Marius Aarra , E Guttulsrud Kristiansen, E K Guttulsrud Kristiansen, H Østlund, L Tormey