Since their win at Melodi Grand Prix last year, the true identities of “Give That Wolf a Banana” duo Subwoolfer have been subject to much speculation.
In the build up to their Eurovision 2022 debut in Turin, fans thought the pair could be Ylvis, Scandi superstars Marcus & Martinus, or even TIX & Alexander Rybak. Well, we can finally put the rumours to rest.
On Saturday 4 February, during the Melodi Grand Prix 2023 final, the pair debuted their new single “Worst Kept Secret” and unveiled their true identities. As predicted, Subwoolfer is none other than A1 heartthrob Ben Adams and Norwegian Idol legend Gaute Ormåsen.
Norway’s Subwoolfer revealed as Ben Adams and Gaute Ormåsen
We caught up with the (former) wolves for a chat about Eurovision and life since Turin.
Ben Adams revealed Subwoolfer was never meant to exist, and the pair never intended to sing “Give That Wolf a Banana” at MGP.
Ben said: “It’s been quite strange. This whole project has happened by mistake: The song was written by mistake, we thought it was really funny, we didn’t think it was gonna win anything. Suddenly it won MGP, we suddenly had to go Eurovision, so we had to work out how we were gonna do this song.”
“The whole thing has been super odd but also the most amazing experience I didn’t know I wanted, ever.”
“Everything has just been one coincidence after another, so I don’t think there was ever a time when we said ‘let’s take this seriously, let’s do it’. Basically we thought that we would have as much fun with this and see how far we can take it. And we took it pretty far!”
Ben and Gaute decided to take “Give That Wolf a Banana” to MGP after realising nobody else would want to sing the song.
Gaute said: “We’ve basically made a song that NRK wanted in Eurovision, which was the first problem actually.”
Ben added: “I think a lot of people thought it was some kind of masterminded project which it wasn’t, we’ve just sort of come up with a problem — so you’ve got this song called ‘Give That Wolf a Banana’, who is going to sing it? No-one wants to sing a song about wolves and bananas.
Ben: It was, because no-one wanted to sing it and we thought, we have to sing it ourselves. How are we gonna do it? Yeah, in masks, that’s fine but why? What’s the story? We must be space-wolves then”.
“We just made up anything and that’s where we are now, performing in front of 8,500 people in Trondheim Spektrum as the former winners of MGP.”
Although the pair’s secret is out, Subwoolfer will continue. Ben and Gaute are now branching their wolf personas into the world of literature.
Gaute said: “We want Subwoolfer to be as big as possible, not only as a band but there’s a book coming now”.
Ben added: “We just signed a book deal with one of the biggest Norwegian publishers. It’s a children’s book”.
He continued: “The nice thing about this project is, that you see people dress up. There were around 80 different subwoolfer members in the audience tonight, so we’re going to do all sorts of cosplay events and conventions”.
Special greeting for Wiwibloggs
We wolf you too!
Were you surprised by Subwoolfer’s real identities? What do you think will happen with them from now on? Give us your thoughts in the comments below.
I hate them now. IDK why for some weird reason, I was happy when they remained “masked”
They are so hot omg
They are awesome!
They are… STUNNING!
I am sad they should have leave their masks on.
I love them with or without the masks, so much talent! love their vocals!
I ship it!
Two handsomes 🙂
Handsome!
At this point I’m just grateful that Norway is sending a human being this year.
If justice had prevailed in 2010, it might have been Ben’s 2nd Eurovision appearance
So you actually thought they were legit wolves??? You do know that there is something called imagination
Ben is so handsome
By far the most overrated entry from Torino 2022, would have rather seen something like Slovenia’s Disko qualify instead, absolutely.
It was a VERY legendary performance that TRUMPED Alessandra’s victory. For me, them confirming who they were was the best moment of the night AND the new song was really good! It was sad at the end when they hugged each other but I KNOW this isn’t the end for them!
So the mystery now , who is Luna Ferrari then?
and the Spaceman? lol
I bet DJ Astronaut was their “translator.” That or the character has been played by different people at different times since the constume is fairly bulky and the voice work is likely all prerecorded. It would be hard to tell if they swapped that guy out for a show.
Yeah the only problem with this theory is that DJ Astronaut was sometimes at the same interviews that their translator (one of the writers of Geronimo lol) was. And his voice doesn’t quite match the one that we see at the Eurovision parties where he does his own thing. I presume he is a well known Norweigan DJ or producer. They mentioned ‘David Guetta’ in the song so it could be someone like him!
That’s the only thing I know for certain, it’s not the translator. I actually saw DJ Astronaut with his helmet off at London Eurovision Party in the green room – but unfortunately I couldn’t recognise him! Shaggy brown hair, skinny guy.
Probably Alan Walker, the producer. But they’ve changed around in the different preparties, because Jim has been different heights!
You have a slight error there: Gaute didn’t win his season of Idol Norway. He was a finalist and finished runner-up to Kurt Nilsen in the show’s first season in 2003.
That reminds me of World Idol, a Eurovision copy long before ASC!
I definitely remember World Idol. So many people thought Kelly Clarkson would win it (and some were speculating it could have been rigged for her to win it), but Kurt surprised everybody by getting the most 10 points from the other countries (as there were 11 countries and they used Eurovision’s scoring system, each country couldn’t vote for themselves, so each got 12 points to start with). I think Kurt got 10 points from all but one of the countries eligible to give points to them (the only one that didn’t was the Arab countries, who gave their 10 points… Read more »
Fair point, I should be able to remember Kurt Nilsen, just didn’t remember it was the same season as Gaute 🙂
This year marks 20 years since he won, it seems so far off now. The 20th anniversary of Kelly Clarkson’s American Idol win was this past September.
This has to of been one the biggest goosebump feelings I have ever had watching MGP on Saturday night. It all suddenly clicked just before the were going to perform with the title of the song that OMG there is going to be a reveal! Me and my friend were screaming at eachother over text. I really hope they continue going, Howling and Worst Kept Secret are actually really good pop songs! Must have rewatched that moment on MGP so many times now and it still fills me with adrenaline!
Ben said they wanna take this as far as they can : )
I admit, I was going into masked singer zone when they were unmasking saying to myself “ take it off! take it off!” And Imagining the who’s “who are you” playing as it’s done in my country?
Silly idea, finally we can forget the Subbowalfer. People vote for anything “FUNNY”
You must be fun at parties
Atleast funnier than Ben and Gaute 🙂
Yeaaaah, let’s only vote for depressing songs.
I am so happy they want to take Subwoolfer and make them as big as possible. I was afraid they were gonna drop the characters but turns out it was the polar opposite. I’m also very curious about that book!
By far one of the most embarrassing stunts in Eurovision history. No music-wise validity, just overblown entertainment, and the whole ”banana” thing reeked of Minions-tier humour.
Was the song about Covid vaccinations or not?
I don’t think so? It was likely always meant to be up for interpretation. The characters and the song were always gonna be up for each individual person to choose\figure out what it means to them.
I thought it was about vaccinations at first, but then nobody ever mentioned it again.
I think the grandma thing was more inspired but red Riding Hood and that Banana is a funny word that kinda rhymes with grandma.
TBH part of the meaning is still about getting vaxxed for me.
Me too.
The point of a song is that it has a meaning both to the artist and to us. In this case, it was a LOT more about US and about having a good time and the music rather than the meaning. But I think the song wrote itself and then that became the backstory for the group.
I think the song was written at the height of Covid panic, just when vaccinations were coming out. As time went on, and most people were already vaccinated, that message became less important. We were already on to the next news story, so it seemed kinda out of date.
I could never figure out what the song was about.
Two hung space wolves who eat grandmas and sing songs to hoomans to make em happy.
I think it was about bullying anonymely on the internet. The wolf masks and different made up names like keith and jim symbole the anonymity, grandma the voulnerable people and giving banana getting help for the people being bullied.
Sorry for posting here (done this already a couple of times), but this just came up, things are going ugly; Source- https://eurovisionfun.com/2023/02/breaking-news-%ce%b7-melissa-%ce%b1%ce%bc%cf%86%ce%b9%cf%83%ce%b2%ce%b7%cf%84%ce%b5%ce%af-%ce%b5%cf%80%ce%b9%cf%83%ce%ae%ce%bc%cf%89%cf%82-%cf%84%ce%b7%ce%bd-%ce%b4%ce%b9%ce%b1%ce%b4%ce%b9%ce%ba/#comments Breaking News: Melissa officially challenges the process | She sent extrajudicial to ERT! According to what was said a little while ago on ALPHA’s show, Super Katerina, through Melissa Mantzoukis’ lawyer, the young artist is now officially questioning the results of the 7-member jury notified to her by ERT, in fact sharing an extra-judicial statement a while ago on Greek public television. The lawyer of Melissa Mantzoukis, Mr. Christos Zotiadis, stated that after the second response of ERT… Read more »
This is the suing season
On the ESC reddit, some greek people said there’s been very shady things happening during the song selection… I understand what they meant now.
Yeah. I mean damn.
Shady things have happened before, but Melissa’s company is German, so ofc she’s not afraid to call them out. It’s so humiliating and I really hope we’ll withdraw, ERT needs it’s lesson.
Didn’t she also sue the broadcaster of Idols because she did not win German Idols?
I really don’t know, I haven’t heard anything about this before.
I read an article about the story on a different eurovision news site. Boy, if I got a nickel for the number of times somebody is suing during the national final season, it would be two, because it happened twice this year (Aiden was the first).
So, we’ve had six disqualifications (half for Moldova, and one each from Latvia, Lithuania, and Malta), and two lawsuits being launched. This is a spicy season.
If I had a shekel for every time a potential ESC act sued their broadcaster this year I’d have two shekels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s strange it happened twice.
If ESC was a pizza, it would have ghost peppers laid all over it.
There were people insinuating that Victor got the job because of his rich family connections in the article about Greece and I won’t lie The thought did cross my mind. Will anything be made out of it?
It’s true that he comes from a rich family, and his association with panik records says A LOT. It’s THE worst label in Greece, and sth similar happened with Terzi in 2018. All they care about is advertisement, check their yt channel, even their big name foureira does trap songs ffs.
The situation is still fresh. Tbh, I don’t expect much, all we can do is wait.
I don’t spec anything to change, and Victor will be sent to Liverpool. Are there any other record labels for Greece and Cyprus besides Panik since you call it the worst?
Of course there are, but I don’t know why especially ERT picks this one. It worked for Cyprus just once, and the next year the same label sent Andromache, and we all saw how that turned out.
Many comments from Greek fans I have read just today state the same; without transparency, it’s better to withdraw, noone wants this.
I don’t think Greece will withdraw, but there might be one thing that might convince them to change things up. I feel bad suggesting this, because I don’t wish this on Victor, but it might be the only way for Greece to change— fail qualify to the final. Greece is not invulnerable to being left behind in the semifinal, as we’ve seen in 2016 and 2018. Of course, that all depends on the quality of Victor’s song. If it’s a good song, then it deserves to go to final, but if it’s not a good song, then it deserves to… Read more »
Both hot in and out of the wolf suits.
Gaute is so hot ?