I don't know if this is what it seems

Well, I never would have seen this coming...

The composers and song titles for the Norwegian national final, the Melodi Grand Prix, were announced today. All of the composers are Norwegian, and I have to admit I'm not all that up on my Norwegian songwriters, but a few names jumped out at me.

The one I'm kind of most surprised at? Fred Ball and Hannah Robinson have a song called "Baby, Don't Stop The Music." You might have heard of Fred Ball through his Pleasure project--the song "Out Of Love" got some blog buzz for a while. He's also worked with Bertine Zetlitz. Hannah Robinson has done stuff with Rachel Stevens ("Some Girls"!), Annie ("Chewing Gum"!), and Sophie Ellis-Bextor ("Me And My Imagination"!), among others; for the sake of my continued attempts to promote Lorie's new album 2Lor En Moi?, it's also worth mentioning that she (along with Richard X and a bunch of others) co-wrote the fantastic "Le Bonheur À Tout Prix !" (though interestingly, she and Richard X [as well as Thierry Sforza] are only credited as "auteur," not "compositeur"--that's Paul Harris and Ian Masterson--which is the opposite of what I would have expected; I kind of think that can't be right...I must be misunderstanding it or something). "Baby, Don't Stop The Music" will definitely be a song to look out for, even if you don't usually pay any attention to the whole Eurovision thing.

Other names I recognize? Anne Hvidsten has written a song ("A Little More") for the contest--she released a solo album some years ago and has written songs outside of that, too. The songs I know her from are pretty much ballads, but she has a great way with ballads.

Paul should be pleased to see that Christian Ingebrigtsen has co-written a song for the MGP; it's called "Eastern Wind" and was written with Eivind Rølles.

I've heard of Mira Craig, but never gone out of my way to listen to her. Anyway, she's got a song called "Hold On, Be Strong" in it; she's definitely got her own very...distinct style.

At least two guys from 70's/'80's-sounding rock band Wig Wam have songs in the competition; guitarist Trond Holter has a song in it called "Get Up" (he wrote last year's "Wannabe," performed by Crash) and singer Åge Sten Nilsen has a song called "Would You Spend The Night With Me."

Moving beyond songwriters, it looks like Lene Alexandra must really be in the MGP--really, "Sillycone Valley," which I remember reading about (can't remember whether it was rumor or confirmed at the time), can't be for anyone else. There's been some talk about who's performing what, but there's been no big announcement of all the performers as of yet.