Tuesday, February 7, 2012

The melodifestival is back!

The first tiny stirrings of Spring are beginning, ironically on the coldest day yet of this Swedish winter. Yes, I'm talking about the Melodifestival, the six-week contest on SVT to decide the country's entry into the Eurovision song contest.

The Swedes really like to stretch it out. Most countries have chosen already; all but a very few will do so over the next few weeks. Sweden is last, as the grand final won't be until March 10. A good chart of each country's entry can be found on Wikipedia.

Saturday's first show was from Växjö, a town of about 65,000 people in south-central Sweden. It had the usual selection of sexy, execrable and kooky performances. The first winner was Dead By April, with a Lincoln Park-esque dual-vocal hard rock ballad.

More intriguing was the second winner, Loreen, a young lady with a fantastically shaggy haircut, mysterious lighting, a costume with some sort of reverse cleavage, but most importantly, a pumping Eurodisco ballad, "Euphoria", which really hits the Eurovision hot buttons in my opinion. She's one to watch, and you can see her here, at least until SVT puts out a copyright notice.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh please can't they finally end this nightmare! The Eurovision was fun in the 70's, possibly even in the 80's. But it is SO ridiculous now. The Swedish elimination, however, is wildly amusing...endless weeks of poor act after poor act and then the winner is always mind-numbingly awful.
Before you brand me a witch, Janne is in full agreement!
I wish YOU great fun with it all though : )
/Marg

Don said...

One man's trash is another man's treasure...!