Sweden 2020 - Victor Crone - Troubled Waters (Microphone Isolated)

Those of us who attended the early sound checks and run through's of Victor Crone's Storm last year will be aware that there were times that his voice was strained pretty much to the limit - and indeed slightly beyond on occasion. At the time we assumed that it was all down to the stress of the overly complicated Augmented Reality stage business that he'd been lumbered with by the Estonian authorities. But it turns out that we might just have assumed incorrectly.

We thought something was a little uncanny when we watched the lad's qualifier performance, but we couldn't quite put our finger on it. Indeed, when he whupped out his ear piece in the run up to the big finishing notes, we just figured that he was giving himself a decent chance to hit all the marks in that noisy old Malmö barn. But possibly not. For Daily Motion have got their hands on the isolated mic recordings with all the music and backing tracks pushed to the back of the mix. And oh my days does it give us a different look at the boy Crone.

For when those especially strainy notes in the chorus come calling, his mic appears to be, ahem, turned off. Or perhaps, as slightly more unkind observers than us have pointed out, he's miming the whole bloody chorus. And it must have been planned way in advance, cos the camera always seems to pan out mysteriously when he does it!

Now let's be generous here. Let's just suppose that he's got some manner of throaty ailment that impeded him from hitting those difficult highs, and the good lord Christer kindly helped him out a bit, just this once, in order to make the show that little bit better. After all, it was clear that he was struggling with quite a few of the more difficult corners of the performance. Or maybe he really wasn't up to it. Which is a bit of a worry if he actually wins the flipping thing, as he'll have to attempt to hit them for real on live TV in front of many more millions that gaze at the Melfestivities.

Oh, and we didn't much care for his somewhat over-the-top celebrations when his name was called at the end. But let's hope it's all very innocent and easily explainable, and the good people of Sweden don't take against him after these revelations. However dubious they may actually seem.