As the interval the hosts, Pernilla Månsson & Magnus Karlsson, (right) announced a euroquiz with a ticket to Birmingham as the prize for 2 lucky persons.
Three excellent reviews of last night's contest:
Finally the long awaited, 37th, Melodifestivalen '98 was to be held in Malmö (ESC '92) March 14th. My choice was an evening with friends having party time or the show. Guess what my choice was...
Last time MF visited Malmö was in '95 when Jan Johansen won performing Se på mej. In 1991 Carola won the Eurovision after the Swedish final in the very same town. Looked promising!
My expectations were bigger than after last year's Blond disaster. Instead of 1 hr as last year the show was extended to 2 hours, mainly because half (5) songs went to a 2nd round when they were performed once again. The newspaper covarage was extremely good with reports weeks in advance. Not mentioning all the scandals. Jill Johnson seemed to be the clear favourite. Nevertheless, very few known artists. In total; 7 ladies, one man and 2 bands.
As the interval the hosts, Pernilla Månsson & Magnus Karlsson, (right) announced a euroquiz with a ticket to Birmingham as the prize for 2 lucky persons.
The stage was filled with mostly yellow and pink balloons in shape resemblent to sexual organs - someone got a strange idea.
Annika Fehling opened. This lady can't really sing. A bit up-tempo song with completely no message at all. Simply crap. 0/5
Last year's 6th placed BIG (Brothers In God) were 2nd on stage. Much better than last year. Rocking Eurovision at best. Still, would the jurors fall for it? 4/5
Elisabeth Melander performed a ballad. Another lady with no voice. Not suitable for Eurovision too. Crap in other words. 0/5 Could it get worse?
Nanne Grönvall (left): up-tempo, oriental, Star Trek outfit, Mr Spock ears! No pretty words here. Nanne was barefoot and Jealous! Hmm... I wasn't really convinced. 3/5
Torgny "Diggi-loo" Söderberg selected totally unexperianced Linda Eriksson to perform a musical act. Somehow I was thinking of Sandra Kim. Very nervous performance. A leather covered guy played violin! 1/5
Frank "1990" Ådahl wrote Kärleken finns överallt. I doubted it would get to top 5. 1/5
And I thought it couldn't get worse. Fredrik Karlsson perfomed... something. A man beside was trying to play on a saw! Fredrik's performance made me laugh. I could have done better. 0/5
Poor sieged Myrra Malmberg (below right) gave the first convincing performance. Another musical, beatiful voice. Lots of la ra na's. Made me bit confused. 2/5
I never thought I would see Black Ingvars in this contest. Up-tempo rock music. I sort of liked it but it would never make any good result in ESC. 3/5
Would Jill save MF from a complete flop? As postcards we were shown Aqua, AC/DC and Beatles. Not as good as Se på mej but the most convincing performance tonight. 4/5
I gave the songs an average of 1,8 out of 5. Poor.
Well, I solved the quiz. Brighton was the right answer but no luck with the phone.
Songs 2, 4, 8, 9 and 10 went to 2nd round. All my top 5! The songs were perfomed once again. Nanne seemed more convincing this time.
The voting was very exciting at the beginning. 11 jury groups were located over the whole of Sweden. Each song got 1,2,4,6 and 8 pts. The favourites were: song 10: 6 top marks from Örebro, Norrköping, Falun, Sundsvall, Stockholm, Göteborg. song 2: 2 top marks from Luleå and Malmö. song 8: 2 from Karlstad and Växjö and song 9: 1 from Umeå. None for Nanne. Malmö gave only 2 pts to Jill and the audience cheered.
Final result:
Black Ingvars 5th with 34 pts, Nanne 4th with 35 pts, Myrra 3rd with 38 pts, BIG (my favourite) 2nd with 52 pts and Jill Johnson winner with 72 pts. Composed by Ingela Forsman, Bobby Ljunggren and Håkan Almquist.
Should easily do top 5. A safe choice in other words.
Goodnight from snow-covered Sweden, looking forward to Birmingham May 9th,
I´m a member of OGAE Sweden, and I´m sending you some comments of the Swedish selection songs: (I´ve listened to all the songs four times.) I saw you´ve already included the result list, so I´ve excluded that part. If you include this info on the webpage, I´ll be happy if you correct the eventual "language-errors" that may be there. I´ve also given each song a "special-price"!
vundsjuk - Nanne Grönvall (best performance !) Nanne gave a stunning performance with this excellent, heavy, rocky, disco-song. She really owned the stage, and appeared in violet hair, "mr spock"-ears and contact lenses with lizzards pupils. She and her husband Peter showed once again that songs mustn´t be about just "love and pain". This was about a mean bitch, very jealous of her friends. It was maybe to odd to win though, but it is surely going to be a hit in Sweden.
Cherie - Black Ingvars (most rocky!) A rock song with 70/80 influences, not very catchy, and unusually anonymous to be written by Stephan Berg. The group is very popular in Sweden, they make hard rock-versions of swedish hits, old and new. Maybe thats why they reached the final...To be sumarized: In my opinion the best song won, but "Avundsjuk" was not far behind. Kärleken är.. will have good chances in the ESC, place 3-6 is my guess! Songs number 1, 3 and 6 should never have been chosen to take part in the contest, they were simply to bad! (Together with song 2 and 8, they were chosen by 2000 sent to SVT. The rest were specially written by invited composers). The presenters were ok, but nothing more. The stage were filled with big "ballons" of different shapes and colours, unusual and kind of funny, but also lowbudget-like, they also gave sexual associations.
It's me again - Oslo calling!! Can it really be two weeks since the MGP? Well, Sweden's turn and I thought you might like another report. You'll possibly be swamped, but I figure it's better to have too much than too little!! You could call this a view from west of the border! By the way, you were right in thinking I'm an Englishman in foreign parts. Can't say I'd ever thought of myself as an ex-pat though, but I've only been here since the summer!! Anyway...
Last night I sat down to watch a Melodifestival for the very first time, a moment I'd waited a long time for. My expectations were high, being based on the two excellent "Rätt Låt Vann" compilations. Plenty of press coverage over the last few days had left me with the impression that I would not be disappointed.
The show started with presenters Pernilla Månsson (right in Dublin, 1995) and Magnus Karlsson coming out of a balloon type bubble thing which was meant to a planet, I think, part of the outer space set. In their introduction they said it was important that a good song was chosen so that neither Ireland nor those Norwegians would win again! Each song was introduced by a short film about the composers' careers.
Opening song NÄR EN STJÄRNA FALLER (When A Star Falls) was not a bad effort. A mid tempo, but slightly predictable song, the sort of thing you'll end up humming and wondering what it is. And what happens when a star falls? Another dance begins. Apparently.
Next came INGEN ANNAN VÄG (No Other Way) from last year's sixth placed group B.I.G. An electric guitar intro to this attempt at something rocky. This was a bit boring and had no real hook. His voice couldn't really get high enough in the chorus. And it reminded me of something else. Nothing new there then.
One of Carola'a backing singers from Rome, Elisabeth Melander, was next up with TA DEJ TID (Take Your Time), a strange song which changed tempo too much. Even so, a pleasant gentle ballad with an accoustic guitar intro and an "ooo-oh" at the end, which is bound to grow on me.
"Why do so few men fall for me? The fact that you're so cute sickens me,"sang One More Time's Nanne Grönvall, who was indeed AVUNDSJUK (Jealous)! A thumping rhythm for this piece of genius! A very modern and electronic sound with a catchy chorus. Brilliant performance too. All I can say is WOW!
BARA MÅNEN FÅR SE (Only The Moon Will See) was a very bizarre affair indeed. A musical-ish sort of song, using the orchestra to the full. The chorus seemed strangely like the classic "Dover-Calais" (MF'85 for the uninitiated) The verse and chorus didn't really belong to each other.
Frank Ådahl-penned KÄRLEKEN FINNS ÖVERALLT (Love Is Everywhere) was a slick and classy piece of pop/soul a la Cajsalisa from last year, or for that matter a lot of Swedish singers - Robyn, Lisa Nilsson etc. Helena Eriksson gave a good performance of this great song. Shame it ended so abruptly.
Peter Svensson of The Cardigans had written the music to LÅNGSAMMA TIMMAR (Slow Hours), but this was no Cardigans song. Accompanied by a man playing the saw, Fredrik Karlsson gave a reasonable performance of a somwhat sad song.
Next up was musicals star Myrra Malmberg singing JULIA. Looking vaguely like Eimear Quinn, Myrra sang a song which would have been excellent for Elisabeth Andreassen in the Melodi Grand Prix, or even for Sissel Kyrkjebø, but just what we do not need more of in Eurovision, despite the fact it was a decent song, apart from a few "la da di da"s in the middle.
The penultimate song was written by Stephan Berg, composer of last year's winner. CHERIE reminded me a bit of U2 and was a rocky and good song although it did not stick in the mind that well. I also felt the performance was not what it might be. The group Black Ingvars describe themselves as a cross between Kiss and Arvingarna!
Finally it was the pre-contest favourite KÄRLEKEN ÄR (Love Is) from the team behind 1995's Se på mej. Another ballad of the same sort, this tried to use the orchestra in a 'dramatic' way which sounded just like it was trying to be dramatic, rather than actually being it. A good voice lifted an average song which lacked that good old "something".
Whilst the juries decided which five songs would go to the final round, we had a quiz featuring old clips of, and questions related to the Melodifestival. The first person to ring in with the right answer would win a trip for two to Birmingham for the contest. A nice idea but it was a bit boring with Magnus struggling to get the audience interested.
Then Pernilla announced (in no particular order of course) the five songs which would be seen again: Avundsjuk, Ingen annan väg, Kärleken är, Cherie and Julia. We saw shots of the green room and I spotted Maria Rådsten, the other member of One More Time, sitting with Nanne and co. Nice to know she's not forgotten!
So came a reprise of the five songs, in the same order as before. I think it would have been good if they had started with Kärleken är and gone backwards, just for a bit of variation. B.I.G.'s lead singer didn't struggle with the high notes so much this time and Nanne took off her shoes so she could stamp her feet more easily!
Then on to the voting, in which eleven juries around the country, gave 8, 6, 4, 2 and 1 points to these remaining songs. It started quite evenly before Kärleken är started to run away with it. The votes were spread quite evenly with only Avundsjuk not managing at least one 8.
So, Jill Johnson will be off to Birmingham with a ballad. Not a good choice I fear. Although a perfectly good song it just won't stand out enough amongst the large field in Birmingham.
My favourite was Avundsjuk, which was one of the most fantastic songs I've ever heard within Eurovision. Nanne would have had the good people of Europe ringing in in their millions, I'm sure. The other song which really stood out for me was Kärleken finns överallt, which I think we'll be hearing a lot of on the radio.
SVT produced an excellent programme - really showing the BBC how a national final should be done! I'll wish Jill good luck in Birmingham - she may well need it.