DR, Danish broadcaster has announced that they will publish the list of participants for the 2009 Dansk Melodi Grand Prix on the 9th of January. The national selection will take place three weeks later with 10 acts. 684 songs were submitted for six spots and four have been specially invited.
It appears that things go a bit slower for DR this season. The host city for the next Dansk Melodi Grand Prix is normally announced in the summer. Three weeks ago it was made public that Herning will be hosting the 2009 Danish final. The list of participants is normally available in the first week of December with a final taking place in February. Next year they final takes place on 31st of January – and DR has just announced that the participants will be made public Friday the 9th – only three weeks before the show.
It is understandable that it took quite a while before DR were able to announce a host city as several had been asked, but decided to turn down the offer. The announcement of Herning to be a socalled Grand Prix city where various related events will take place all over the city in the days before came as a pleasant surprise to many fans who had been fearing that it would all end in a smaller show in a TV studio. Maybe the late presentation of the participants will involve a pleasant surprise as well?
DR had received 684 songs when the deadline ended in October. Out of those an unknown jury have selected six songs that will compete in the Danish final. Four more songs will be added, but as something new they have been specially invited. DR has taken this step in order to secure a higher quality and wider scale music wise. These four spots will be for names that would normally not think about submitting songs for the Dansk Melodi Grand Prix, but it is not believed to include acts with international fame such as Alphabeat and Infernal. Among the ones that have been mentioned to have submitted songs are DQ who represented Denmark at the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest with the song Drama queen.
This year Simon Mathew ended 15th in the final in Belgrade with All Night Long and though many are satisfied with him just qualifying for the final in the first place there is pressure on his successor to do better in Moscow.
