Criminals of Love

Criminals of Love (or by its Ostlandic title: Kjärrekriminelen) is a song by Ostlandic electronic music group Authority of Theft. It was released on January 12, 2020, and won the National Selection to represent Ostland in the Eurovision Song Contest of 2020, which was later cancelled.

The song was launched and marketed as the group's lead single for their second studio album: Theftical. The song was written and produced solely by the group and co-produced by Jan Martensen.

Background
Authority of Theft originally disbanded in 2018 after a series of controversies surrounding them, first of them with rapper TheJoint for the rights of the writting of the song "Armamental", followed by allegations to group's bassist Trond Stalle for verbal abuse against personnel, and last, a social media hate campaing against them for criticizing slightly-homophobic politics in EU members, specifically Poland, Hungary and Baltic countries.

This last controversy inspired song's lyrics, according to band's vocalist Kasper Bärrfjord, which mentioned that " Europe is still not the open-minded continent everybody think. We have a lot of conservative regimes doing wrong against the human rights, just by the way ".

The group reintegrated in late 2019, apologizing for the controversies they were involved, with Stalle accepting that "he cursed on" personnel in March 2018 before group's concert, at Ulrighandall Festivalen, and announced their retirement from the group. They revealed they were working on a new song and that "they wanted to show a message with it".

The original version of the song features lyrics in English and Russian, being English replaced with Ostlandic for the national version.

Plot
'Criminals of Love' is a semi-melancholic but hopeful, up-tempo piece. The song reflects the fear of a 'forbidden love' from being publicly exposed, and consequently, arrested; placing us in a fictional city called 'Desperanza', which is victim of constant and severe control of the information by the police: 'The Guard of the Morals'. The couple's sexuality is not revealed but leaves hints of being same-gendered.

Reception
The song was released on January 12, 2020, without any announcement or previous promotion. It was sent to Ostland radios the next day. On January 19, it was the tenth confirmed song (of twenty overall)  to participate on Ostmusikk Fest 2020.

National selection
The song was assigned to the Group B, winning their round, with 89 points (34 from juries and 55 from televote). The song was challenged by the Masked Jury to a showdown against the second placed song from the Group B: 'Miljoner Lysses' by Andrei Elgo, resulting on Criminals Of Love win and classification to the finals. In the final round, the song won with 148 points (59 from juries and 89 from televote), being also the highest placed in every category of jury's criteria, except for the "Instrumental" one.