You know the winner takes it all

The period between the end of national finals and the beginning of Eurovision can be pretty rough to get through. Songs from the national finals of past years are one of my main methods of coping, and there aren't many that do the job of cheering me up better than Birgitte Einarsen's "Good Evening, Europe!". Entered in Norway's 2003 Melodi Grand Prix and with a sound much more common in the early '00s than it is now, it ended up taking third out of twelve.



I usually prefer "Saturday," Birgitte's MGP entry from 2006, to "Good Evening, Europe!"--it's dancier and swooshier--but, as you might guess from its title, "Good Evening, Europe!" is an adorable little celebration of Eurovision which throughout the course of its lyrics manages to allude to numerous previous entrants (though not always their Eurovision songs). Like "Saturday," it has disco influences, albeit tamer ones, but mainly it's just a good sweet Scandinavian-flavored upbeat pop song.

Oh, what the heck, while we're talking about Birgitte, we might as well watch her perform "Saturday," which made it to Norway's final but not its super-final (and which I wrote about briefly a while ago). It's a great string-featuring disco-pop song, just the sort of stuff I hope to get from national finals.



I don't know of anywhere selling the CD for the Melodi Grand Prix 2003 at the moment, but it's always possible it might show up on eBay.