The Wiwi Jury — our in-house panel of music unprofessionals — has travelled to Norway to review the songs competing in Melodi Grand Prix 2019. Ten years on from their last win, we are looking for the next Norwegian “Fairytale”. Today we look at Erlend Bratland with “Sing for You”. Is Erlend singing his way to victory or will he be thunderstruck? Read on to find out.
Erlend Bratland — “Sing for You”
“Sing for You” reviews
Luis: Erland wants to sing for you, and apparently record it on a cassette tape, because this song comes from a time when CDs weren’t even a thing. This entry belongs in another era and Norway knows what happens when they go for outdated ballads. What, allegedly, should be epic build-ups and empowering strings only trigger yawns. Erland’s vocals are the only positive asset of this entry, but we can have those in a better package in a future edition of MGP.
Score: 2/10
Renske: The man who almost beat Mørland in Melodi Grand Prix 2015 is back for another face-off with him. Although I must admit that “Sing for You” is not the strongest studio cut of the bunch, Erlend has a great voice and a great stage appeal, and I don’t doubt that his performance will be emotional as well as strong. This time, he has opted for a more classical type of ballad, shying away from his power ballad bid of four years ago. I would disagree about the song being dated, as I actually think that opting for this type of ballad makes it more current, because power ballads are so 2013.
Score: 6.5/10
Steinunn: One word — uninteresting. Erlend is a great singer and I still listen to his entry from 2015, but this is just something… else. The song is an outdated power ballad and just sounds like a watered down version of Robbie Williams’ “Feel” that‘s missing a climax and I feel nothing.
Score: 3/10
Bernardo: In the first five seconds of the song, I was really into his vocals — mostly because they were isolated. Once the percussion kicked in, this took me back in time at least one decade. There are good throwbacks and bad throwbacks. “Sing for You” fits in the second category. Erlend’s vocal tries to give if a bit of a lift but even so, it can’t.
Score: 3/10
Izhar: Don’t get me wrong. I love ballads and Norway sure knows how to deliver when it comes to ballads. But it seems that this song goes nowhere and I’ve lost interest very quickly. Although I believe that Erlend is a good singer, the song simply doesn’t belong in 2019 and it is very outdated and old-fashioned. By the way, speaking of outdated songs, the chorus sounds slightly like “Feel” by Robbie Williams. Sorry, I’m not a fan.
Score: 3/10
Julian: Hearing the first few seconds of the song, I thought it would be a nice ballad with emotions and all that kind of stuff. Sadly, the song does not take me anywhere and as fast as it came, it left. Erlend does have a very beautiful and soft voice and I do think there are many emotions in his voice, but the song simply isn’t my cup of tea. I definitely like well-produced ballads but this one does not belong in that category.
Score: 3.5/10
In our Melodi Grand Prix 2019 Wiwi Jury, we have 14 jurors but only room for 6 reviews. The rest of our scores can be found below:
| Antranig: 5.5/10
Antony: 4/10 Robyn: 6/10 Oliver: 4/10 |
Sebastian: 4/10
Deban: 8.5/10 Florian: 3/10 Pablo: 1.5/10 |
Before calculating the average score, the highest and lowest scores are dropped. This is to remove outliers and reduce potential bias. We have removed a low of 1.5 and a high of 8.5.
Looks like Adam Lambert, sounds like a less talented Michael Bolton. He may “wanna sing for [me],” but nah man- I’m good.
Deban gives it 8.5, I’m dead.
Oh, I’m glad some jurors have finally spoken out about the great similarities of “Sing For You” with Robbie Williams’ “Feel”! (I’ve realized I said “Angels” instead of “Feel” yesterday talking about Petruska, ugh…). It is true this song is worse than “Feel” and won’t win, but it is still a case of possible plagiarism that should be inspected.
The song is bad, dated and cheesy by itself, but under plagiarism allegations this is a 0/10 for me.
I see a lot of comparisons to Robbie Williams’ “Feel” but am I the only one getting a lot of Radiohead’s “Creep” in the verses?
When wiwi jury will review Lithuanian finalists? 1day before Eurovision semi final in May?
I agree. They don’t have time for everything, but I’d at least like to have a ”Wiwi jury picks their favorites” out of top 8. Lithuania has an interesting NF, consisting of 3 fan-favorites (2 from the same singer), 2 intentional joke entries, 2 unintentional and one typical pop song.
EDIT – Seems like Criminal has been replaced with Alen Chicco’s Your Cure! Now, that’s newsworthy!
EDIT 2 – Thanks for the response, Antranig! 🙂
Coming soon!
Sing for You – Listen, I quite love power ballads as a genre. Some of my NF winners are ballads (France, Romania, Denmark, Lithuania). However, this one quite goes on the blander side. I don’t dislike it and honestly, it’s quite pleasant, although I do *feel* the same thing at the chorus, pun intended. It’s very dated too. In a relatively strong NF like MGP, this doesn’t stand a chance. 4.5/10
“Good intentions”. This is about the only positive aspect I can recall from this entry. I don’t like to be negative, so instead I will just wish Erlend all the best in his career.
Was really looking forward to this but alas, was very disappointed. The whole song just seems like a bad idea, in every single aspect.
Will we Get a reaction video from Deban and William this year?:)