Denmark receives my “guilty pleasure” award this year, though I am sure I am not alone in that. It is actually my husband’s favourite entry this year and he thinks I have placed this far too low. I have pointed out that being in my top 20 means it’s got a high placing… Fyr & Flamme were somewhat surprise winners of Denmark’s national final. The Danish selection itself was somewhat controversial after last year’s winners, Ben & Tan were neither asked to be the entry again nor given a pass to Dansk Melodi Grand Prix 2021, and indeed they submitted a song but were rejected on somewhat spurious grounds (despite song being better than most of those in the Danish national final!)

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The controversy of the Danish selection meant the national final passed me by a little (Ben & Tan’s 2020 entry “Yes” was in my top 10) but I don’t think the result it gave had been expected. Danish Eurovision entries are often stereotyped as being very happy, jolly, frothy mid to uptempo songs, and “Øve os på hinanden” is very much in this vein. Fyr & Flamme had said they wanted to give people a song that reminded them of the happy, catchy, toe-tappy songs of late 70s and 1980s Danish entries, and they’ve not just delivered a memory of those, they’ve given us a full blooded 1980s song!

Fyr & Flamme are a duo consisting of Jesper Groth and Laurits Emanuel. Laurits is the songwriter and co-composer, though not lead singer – in the video, he’s on the guitar, while it’s Jesper who is the lead singer and in the foreground. Jesper is actually an actor (I think a comic actor) but the pair of them have already had some chart success in Denmark before the national final with two songs in 2020. Their unashamed embrace of 1980s music and their desire to hark back to 1980s Danish Eurovision also means that for the first time since 1997, and the only time since the 1999 language rule change, Denmark are sending a song in Danish! Definitely a positive in my book… Also, 1997 was the last time the UK won but much as I like the UK entry this year, I don’t think a repeat of Katrina and the Waves is on the cards.

This has been quite a grower for me. I was sceptical at first, but listening to it as I have been on walks or driving has really warmed me to how fun and catchy it is (and got me walking faster and in a jauntu way!). How will this end up doing at Eurovision? Really difficult to say actually! It’s got the closing spot of semi-final 2, and entries closing semi-finals tend to qualify more often than not. Not all though… (remember Triana Park for Latvia in 2017?) This has the potential to play along lines of 2018 where the song was far more popular with the televote than with juries. I think that could well be the case this time – the juries are unlikely to give this much love (if any!) but the televote could get it into the final (especially if they go all out with fun and 1980s in their staging).

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Denmark in the Eurovision Song Contest