ICELAND 2005: Selma - If I Had Your Love

This is my favorite Icelandic entry ever. I dig this song. It's one of the 2005 entries I listen to the most. Maybe my ... #2 favorite from that year. :-) It's catchy, it has a great beat, and I really like her voice. Selma Björnsdóttir has participated in the ESC twice, the first time was in 1999 when the song she competed with, All Out of Luck, was one of the top favorites but was beaten by the Swedish entry, Take Me To Your Heaven, the last ABBA ripoff to make it big in the contest. (But she did come second, which was Iceland's best ESC result until this year ... and actually still is, because they came second in Moscow too. :-) In Kyiv in 2005 Selma returned with this song, yet another big favorite. She was tipped as the winner all over the place. I personally was convinced that Iceland would kick ass that year. Not that they'd win ... I was thinking Malta to win that year, although I would have preferred Hungary, but I was really worried about Greece since they had a song I didn't like at all but were sure to do very well with ... and, indeed, they won. >:-( But where was I.

Oh yes, Selma &co. were favorites to win with this entry. Everyone thought they would do so well. So of course Europe was shocked!! to see it get beaten out in the semi. :-o This fantastic song ended up getting the worst result ever for Iceland. V. sad. I blame it on three things: First of all my theory that songs that are too professional generally don't do well. Songs that are too slick, too overproduced ... that's not really what the ESC audience wants. The voting audience usually wants something with more personal charm (like our little hobbit this year :-). Second, this song may have been too good ... in the sense that people thought that everyone's gonna vote for this, so I don't have to, it'll do so well anyway. But if everyone thinks like that, well, that's not good for that entry that everyone likes. :-)

The third reason, and I realize I sound totally shallow in saying this, I think was her outfit. I know!! But I really think her stage costume screwed this song over. I was really looking forward to seeing this in the semi, but as soon as I saw her on stage I was sitting there thinking ... WTF??! What the hell is she wearing?? And trust me, I am not fashion conscious. But that was just too weird.

Don't take my word for it, though, see for yourselves. :-) This is Selma performing If I Had Your Love, composed by Þorvaldur Bjarni Þorvaldsson & Vignir Snær Vigfusson and with lyrics by Selma herself, cowritten with Linda Thompson. This intrepid foursome competed for Iceland in Kyiv's Palace of Sports on Thursday, May 19th, 2005.



Lyrics here.