"Anja Nissen's second attempt to represent Denmark at the Eurovision Song Contest is a strong performance.
This isn't Anja Nissen's first attempt at representing Denmark at the Eurovision Song Contest. Last year, she did reasonably well in the Dansk Melodi Grand Prix with "Never Alone", but that song didn't feel truly original. It was written by Emilie DeForest (who won the contest for Denmark a few years ago) and... kind of sounded like it. One year later and it seems Anja's ready to try again with something that feels a little less derivative in "Where I Am":
In what's a bit of a rarity in the field this year, "Where I Am" keeps growing on me with each listen. The opening's a little adult-contempo (in a bad way), but this quickly becomes a strong mid-tempo ballad with a catchy chorus. This does a good job of straddling the worlds of "Eurovision" songs and what's going on in current pop, and feels like an easy qualifier to the final—at least compared to the other tracks I've heard at this stage of the competition.
The performance needs a little work, but it's in places that can easily be tightened up by the performance in Kyiv. I'd love to see camerawork that works a little closer to Anja's performance—there's a lot of dramatic faraway shots that are great, but don't showcase her. Anja's clearly a talented performer who wants this badly, so it would be a shame not to give her the spotlight she's worked for."