Introduction

• Participant(s): JOWST
• Song: "Grab The Moment"
• Writer(s): Jonas McDonnell
• Composer(s): Joakim With Steen
• Broadcaster: NRK
  
• Social media:
• Team review: 

The Norwegian national final “Melodi Grand Prix”is a contest with a long history. The rules change from time to time. There is only one live show with then competitors, out of 1035 submitted entries. Norway is very keen to win the ESC again, but the quality of this year’s songs were far away from winning. The only exception was the winning song “Grab The Moment” by Jowst. This was the only contemporary song in this year’s final. The unusual stage performance also gave this entry the extra kick.

Jowst is a duo which consists of Joakim With Steen, alias Jowst, who is the DJ wearing an interesting mask and the main singer and Aleksander Walmann. Jowst has developed an interested in punk rock and composing. For his song “Grab The Moment” he utilized a closed Facebook group of his friends to judge and improve the song. Now Jowst is sound engineer and producer. Aleksander comes from a music family. He reached the finals of The Voice Norway. He also is specialized on synchronizing animated movies.

The song “Grab The Moment” is a contemporary radio friendly song with some R’n’B elements, a nice groovy and convincing entry, which also been treated as the underdog this year. Probably the song will not convince by first hearing, but it has the potential to grow.

History

• Debut: 1960
• Participations: 56
• Victories: 3
• Finals: 52 (10 since 2005)
• Top 10: 22
• Chances for Top 10: 40 %
• Chances for Final: 77 %

Norway has joined the Eurovision Song Contest in 1960. The first entry “Voi-voi” by Nora Brocksted made a good 4th place. Norway is the record holder in getting last at the ESC when it comes the voting. In the 56 years of history, Norway has been last for 11 times, and four times Norway has not received a single point. Even if the Scandinavian countries have a similar taste of music and singers are mostly known all over Scandinavia, Norway and Sweden battle out their own competition, but like all Nordic countries are generally very generous exchanging points with each other.

On the other hand, Norway has won three times and has been in the Grand Final for 51 times and reached the Top10 21 times, that’s a 40% chance for Top10 position for Norway. Some Norwegian entries have become real evergreens such as “Lykken er” by Hanne Krogh (1971, 17th place), “Mata Hari” by Anne-Karine Ström (1976, 17th place), “Mitt Liv” by Kate Gulbrandsen (1987, 9th place) and “My Heart Is Yours” Didrik Solli-Tangen (2010, 20th place). In the recent years Norway has been quite successful again, since 2012 Norway could mostly qualify for the Grand Final, that’s mainly due to the good quality songs on a very good international level.

Last year Agnete could not make it into the Grand Final with “Icebreaker”. This was probably not due to her song, but more due her illness of bipolarity which did not allow here to appear at public events and press conferences.