The votes for the fourth annual esctoday.com awards have been cast over the last three and a half weeks and now it is time to reveal the results. We continue with the Best male performance award.

The 2009 esctoday.com Award for Best male performance goes to…

• …Alexander Rybak of Norway

Alexander Rybak represented Norway in the Eurovision Song Contest this year and won both the secoond semi final and the final with the song Fairytale.

The winner

This is the second esctoday.com award for Norway (not counting national final categories) following the award for Lyricist of the year in 2008. It is still the first victory in this category, which is no surprise considering that Norway was always represented by a female soloist in the previous years the awards were held. Previously, this award has gone to Dima Bilan (Russia) in 2006, Koldun (Belarus) in 2007 and Boaz Mauda (Israel) in 2008.

Alexander Rybak was born in Minsk,Belarus, but he grew up in Norway. He started playing the violin and the guitar at the age of fiveand he also bebgan singing and writing his own songs. He hit the stage soon andperformed with famous artists like Morten Harket of a-ha (Eurovision Song Contest 1996 host), Hanne Krogh (Norway 1971, 1985, 1991) and Arve Tellefsen.

Having already taken part in Norwegian Pop Idol in 2005,Alexander took part in the second edition of the talent search Kjempesjansen, a Norwegian TV showthat is looking for young talents in music and dance, in 2006.He could win this show with his own composition Foolin'.He later won the Anders Jahres award and became a conductor for Norway's most famous orchestra of young musicians. In 2007, he starredas fiddler in the Jerry Bock/Sheldon Harnick musical Fiddler on the roof in Oslo.

In 2009, Alexander took part in MGP 2009, the Norwegian national final for the Eurovision Song Contest. He qualified from the semi final and could win the national final by a landslide. At that time, Fairytale was already the number one in the Norwegian charts and it was therefore the first MGP entry ever to top the charts before the final was held. To date, the single has sold to multiple platinum and after its victory in Moscow, it became a hit all over Europe. With Funny little world, he scored another number one hit in his home country.

The complete results

Alexander Rybak won this category by a landslide ahead of Sakis Rouvas from Greece getting more than twice as many votes. None of the other acts even came close to the top two.

1. Alexander Rybak (Norway) – 47.8%
2. Sakis Rouvas (Greece) – 22.6%
3. Brinck (Denmark) – 12.7%
4. Sasha Son (Lithuania) – 11.2%
5. Petr Elfimov (Belarus) – 5.8%

The winning performance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJy6D5qaRfc

esctoday.com interview with Alexander Rybak in May 2009, prior to the Eurovision Song Contest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyDd3GZe6Vo

The next category to be revealed will be Best duo/group performace. Stay tuned for it after the Albanian presentation show!