Melodi Grand Prix 2007 - Semi-finals - This Year's Melodi Grand Prix

This Year's Melodi Grand Prix

• A total of 260,249 televotes were counted in the gold final, down with about 4,450 from the MGP gold final of 2006.
• After a rather unexiting vote announcement sequence, as Guri won with more than 30,000 televotes more than the runner up Jannicke, the 45 year old famous musical artist and Dancing with the Stars participant Guri Schanke, was declared the winner of Melodi Grand Prix 2007. Though the punk-pop/rock group Crash! won the votes of the three juries by a landslide - composed as they all were by three younger and three older than 30 years - they were the least favourites among the televoters. Guri Schanke won four out of the five televoting regions, only missing out on the South of Norway by a couple of thousand votes. Guri received about 38% of the televotes in the gold final, a much higher percentage and total number of votes than Christine Guldbrandsen received the year before.
• Ven a bailar conmigo, as is the title of Guri's winning entry, is Spanish and means come with me to dance or simply come dance with me. The entry was specifically order by the Norwegian broadcaster NRK who wanted Guri Schanke to dance and sing an uptempo, fiery Latino song - due to Guri's second place in the Norwegian version of the popular TV series Dancing with the Stars - airing on the commercial TV station TV2 - where she learned to dance tango perfectly, amongst other dances. Even the song writer Thomas G:son - Sweden's answer to Ralph Siegel concerning the record of Eurovision Song Contest and national final compositions - was personally contacted and invited by NRK. The leading Eurovision fan site, ESCToday.com, has already crowned Thomas G:son to be the new Eurovision king stealing the privilege from Ireland's triple winner Johnny Logan. Both Guri and Thomas thought NRK had a fantastic idea and decided to jump into it. Since then, NRK has promoted Guri and her song as the one to beat, even being announced a week before the other entrants in her semi final and giving her the last, and thus best, starting position in the big final.
• NRK video of Guri Schanke's winning performance of her latino entry Ven a bailar conmigo.
• Before the results of the gold final were announced, last year's winner Christine Guldbrandsen made a spectacular entrance into the stage of Oslo Spektrum, were she was descending from the sky looking like a real angel. She sang two of her own songs, one from her new album that was released commercially five days prior to the final, plus a remixed version of her own Eurovision entry Alvedansen.
• The after party for participants, hosts, previous MGP and Eurovision artists and other invited guests, was this year held at the new, and Norway's only, Hard Rock Café situated on Oslo's main street, the Karl Johan Street, the location of Norway's royal castle and parliament, plus Oslo's central train station and parts of its university. There, all the super finalists performed their songs once again, as well as Bobbysocks who sang their Eurovision winning entry La det swinge. Guri Schanke promised not to put her heals onto the roof as she said, but rather enjoy her victory in a more relaxed manner with just a glass of champagne or two.