Iceland haven’t had it easy in the last decade: With the exception of one silver medal, courtesy of Yohanna and Is It True in 2009, all their entries finished either in the bottom half of the final, or – between 2006 and 2008 – didn’t even qualify.

Will this year’s entry, No Prejudice by Pollapönk, improve matters for them? Probably not. But more on that later.

Söngvakeppnin, the Icelandic national selection, didn’t provide much competition this year, and after two 5-song semi finals, a 5-song final and a 2-song superfinal, it was determined that the band Pollapönk and their song, No Prejudice, would carry the island nation’s flag in Copenhagen. They initially performed the song in Icelandic, as required in the national selection. However, this year the Icelandic broadcaster tried to implement a new rule under which, during the superfinal, the artists had to perform their songs in the same language in which they would want to perform it in Denmark. Pollapönk performed a mixed-language version – but later the broadcaster changed the rule again, and Pollapönk ended up submitting a fully English version. Phew!

No Prejudice is a cheerful, fun(k)-pop-rock song with an infectious melody, and despite the difficulty of classifying it genre-wise, it is lot of fun to listen to as long as you can ignore the cliché lyrics. Luckily for them no one pays attention to lyrics at Eurovision anyway – but people do pay attention to visuals, and here we have a problem.

I am not entirely convinced that a stage act which pretty much channels the x-rated version of the Teletubbies 20 years later, facial hair, a few extra kilograms and all, is the most visually appealing image. Combined with an hyperactive yet aimless performance, as demonstrated in both the national final performance and the videoclip, the result is a messy, if colorful, visual overload which distracts from an otherwise good composition.

Their biggest advantage is the fact they are in semi 1, where most songs are either ballads, depressing, or both. There’s a tiny number of uptempo, happy songs in the mix, and all differ musically from one another. No Prejudice is even sandwiched between two female ballads, maximizing the standing-out factor.

My verdict? Even though I think it has a strong melody and some sense of fun, I think the overall result is too busy and not appealing enough for people to pick up their phones for it, and that it will actively suffer with the juries, who have quite a few more jury-pleasing choices to select from. The limited audience support might be enough for it to squeeze through to Saturday night if enough ballads split the votes elsewhere in the semi. But if it does make it to the final, I can’t see it going anywhere but down.

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