Tonight, the 'last chance' round of MGP 2009, the Norwegian national selection for the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest, was held. Eight acts that did not finish in the top two of the semi finals competed for the last two tickets to the national final next week.

The show was held in two rounds. In the first round, the eight songs competed in pairs with the favourite of each pair reaching the next round. The following songs were the favourites:

• Espen Hana – Two of a kind (eliminating KeSera)
• Surferosa – U look good (eliminating Jani Santillan)
• Publiners – Te stein (eliminating Sunny)
• Jane Helen – Shuffled (eliminating Foxy)

It has to be mantioned that both acts that were chosen as additional wildcards were eliminated in the first round. In the second round,the four remainingsongs competed again in pairs and the telvoters decided that they want to give the following acts another chance next week:

• Espen Hana – Two of a kind (eliminating Surferosa)
• Publiners – Te stein (eliminating Jane Helen)

esctoday.com poll results

The esctoday.com poll voters partly agreed with the televoters. The runner-up in the poll, Publiners, made it to the final while Espen Hana, the other qualifer, had only finished seventh in the poll. Surferosa, who had one the poll, were eliminated after the second round.

Maria Haukaas Storeng easily won the 2008 Melodi Grand Prix final getting almost 80,000 votes more than runner-up Torstein Sødal. With the song Hold on be strong, she finished 5th in the Eurovision Song Contest in Belgrade giving Norway its best placing since 2003. The song was a #1 hit in Norway and also entered the charts in Sweden and Denmark.In 2009, Norway will take part in the second semi final on 14th May.

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