If there’s one country that managed to experiment with the extremes of the scoreboard in the last five years, it is Norway. They managed to win with 387 points, finish last with 380 points less than their winning score, and rack up a bottom 5 placement and a top 5 placement too – as well as even failing to qualify once. After last year’s fourth place, courtesy of Margaret Berger, NRK downsized its national selection, the Melodi Grand Prix. Only 15 acts took part, divided into three heats that occurred on three consecutive nights. The top three from each heat qualified to the final.

When the songs were revealed prior to the competition, Carl Espen and his song, Silent Storm (which was composed and written by his cousin, Josefin Winther), stood out right away and Espen became a red hot favorite to win. He won both his heat and the final, although by less of a margin than one might have imagined for such a favorite. The low number of votes aside – much lower than in previous years, which can be attributed to the change in the format and lack of familiar names – his final result might suggest some of the issues he will face come May 8th and the second semi-final.

Silent Storm is a good song. It is made of all the right ingredients for that type of a rock ballad. It is well-structured and catchy and builds in the right places. In fact, it is so well-structured that it sometimes feels a little calculated and lacking of a real heart within it, but this is an aspect that might escape first-time viewers. From the reactions to it before the national final, we know that as a song it immediately receives strong reactions. But at Eurovision, even though it is a song competition, a song alone is not enough. Every song must have the right performance and performer, and this is where the song fails. At 31, this is Espen’s first commercial song and first time to perform in such a setting. If his MGP performances are anything to go by, while he is capable of vocally delivering the song, his emotional delivery is pretty much non-existent.

Some fans will say that they are deeply touched by the emotions they feel he brings across using his eyes, and it might be true, and some people might interpret his performance in that way. However, in most of Europe, or at least in the East and South of it, performance and expression are directly tied to making use of one’s facial muscles. Espen, for the entire three minutes, never changes his expression. He hardly moves his lips. For many viewers, this will come across as completely detached, and detachment doesn’t work for a song that is so clearly based on its emotional core.

Some will argue that the line “There’s a silent storm inside me” suggests an introvert person and as such, a performance with minimal expression is fitting. And in theory they might be correct. But to be able to deliver such a complex emotional message, you need at least a strong charisma to carry you through, which Espen is completely devoid of. To me, personally, his facial expression reads as “I really want to finish singing this and get off this damn stage”, which is not a particularly convincing way to get someone to vote for you, even though I do appreciate the honesty.

My verdict? With a strong song and virtually no ballads in the second semi-final, qualification is a no-brainer, even with such a lacking performance. In the final, however, Espen will run into a plethora of ballads and other melancholic-to-depressing songs coming in from the first semi, and he’ll probably lose out to all of them. Nevertheless, the strength of the song itself might save him from a bottom five finish, and give Norway an unexciting middle-ground result.

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