Melodifestivalen

I promised this one a while ago, and it's finally time to come through for you. Most of my research was done in Wikipedia, but I did tune in for the finals of the losers' bracket and the overall finals, so what I'm about to tell you actually has some relevance.

It all started with the Eurovision song competition. Some might say it's kind of a big deal. The first big television network in Europe was up and running sometime in the 1950s. To show off the technology, and to create some sort of post-WWII friendly competition between the European nations, the Eurovision network decided to host a song competition, broadcast live in a large number of nations through central Europe. Live broadcasts are obviously pretty common now, but at the time, broadcasting a live show taking place in France (or wherever the first competition was held) across the continent was an incredible feat. So the premise of the show is that each of the participating countries enters the best song, always sung in the language of the home country. Not sure how the voting took place at first, but the bands would perform live for everyone to watch, and the country with the winning band got to host the competition in the following year.

The competition has evolved so that like American Idol, which is really a modification and a ripoff, people now vote by text message. Also, the English speaking countries had an unfair advantage since everyone understands their lyrics, so all countries are allowed to enter songs sung in English. The Eurovision competition has basically been the starting point for most European pop bands, and even as Top 40 fads change with time, the original pop styles of the 50s and 60s are still some of the most popular songs, just because of tradition. Us Americans have never heard about this because few European bands make it across the Atlantic...with one exception. ABBA won the competition and that's really where they got their start.

There are also some interesting voting issues. The Nordic countries always tend to support the Nordic artists, the Eastern European countries tend to vote together, etc. That makes it much harder for a Norwegian to win because of the lack of people. For example, there are more people in Amsterdam than in Norway and Sweden combined. If the Belgians throw their votes to the Netherlands, Sweden doesn't have a chance. They do have some sort of thing to kind of sort this out. A panel of judges from all over Europe vote and some sort of score is tallied, and the bands are also given a score for the popular vote. These to scores are given equal weighting, so the judges have a lot of power to offset the regional voting problems.

The Swedes do have another chance though. They're absolutely crazy (they're own words) about this competition. That's where Melodifestivalen comes into play. Melodifestivalen is the Swedish competition that takes place in the months leading up to Eurovision, and this competition is how they select their entrant into the Eurovision competition.

It sounds like a big battle of the bands, but that's a huge understatement. The battle isn't about the band, the battle is about the song. Songwriters submit about a thousand songs and they're whittled down to the top 30. Then the songwriters take those songs and find an artist that they want to represent them in the competition. The artist can say yes or no, and once the lineup is set, the competition begins.

Each week the artist performs their song, exactly the way it will be performed at the final competition. Same clothes, same body movements, same camera angles, same everything. From week to week the only variation is that a few bands have been kicked out of the competition. Typically they vote off the worst band or two, but the losers bracket was exactly that, a single elimination competition. The top two bands from that night actually performed their songs live three times in two hours. Think about that...you sit down to watch a TV show, and you see the EXACT same thing, over and over and over. And the Swedish crowd just ate it up.

On top of that, the songs are pretty cheesy.

So anyway, I tuned in for the losers' bracket and once Miranda arrived I made her tune in for the finals. She had no idea what to expect, but wow did we have a good time. It didn't matter that the show was hosted in Swedish, it was hilarious. I had to watch it anyway...my coworkers told me it was a Swedish tradition and sure enough, it was front page news for a few weeks towards the end of Melodifestivalen.

So Sweden has now picked their winner. Some sort of discoish tune sung by Charlotte Perrelli. I guess she's won the entire competition before, so the Swedes really hope she'll come through for them again. The Eurovision finals will take place on two days at the end of May. We'll be tuning in, and will do our best to keep you all updated.

We've also been bombarded by the winning and losing tunes on the radio. At the post-volleyball party last weekend we actually heard "Lay Your Love on Me" by B.W.O. played on repeat about five times straight. The tune is okay on the radio, but seeing it performed live is a totally different story. I called the lead singer Hansel as he's a carbon copy of Owen Wilson's Zoolander character.

I realize that none of the stuff I've written will seem funny to any of you, but it's more Swedish than Swedish meatballs, so I had no choice but to write in great detail. To truly share in the fun, you've gotta check out the performances. I've done my YouTube research and cut out the slowest ballads. They're in no particular order, but I hope you enjoy.

Charlotte Perrelli - Hero (The winner.)

Rongedal - Just a Minute (My boss' favorite.)

Linda Bengtzing - Hur Svårt Kan Det Va?

Funny story, Linda Bengtzing waited on my coworker a week before this competition. My coworker had had a couple of glasses of wine when she started talking to Linda and Linda told her that her music career was just breaking through. My coworker replied "Yeah right!" and continued to be quite rude. Linda got a newspaper article with a picture of her and an interview to show she wasn't lying. My coworker still wasn't impressed. A week later she was topping the charts with a new CD and one of the top Melodifestivalen songs. My coworker feels bad now.

Caracola - Smiling in Love (Didn't make it out of the losers' bracket.)

BWO - Lay Your Love on Me (Hansel?)

Frida feat. Headline - Upp o Hoppa (No idea how this made the finals.)

Ola Svensson - Love in Stereo (Old 80s song, teen heartthrob, didn't get out of the losers' bracket.)

E-Type & the Poodles - Line of Fire (GnR wanna-bes? Look at their hair! Didn't make it out of the losers' bracket.)

Nordman - I Lågornas Sken (Entered the finals by winning the losers' bracket. My favorite, but apparently had some critics because the witch burning brought back bad historical issues.)

Amy Diamond - Thank You! (15-year-old superstar with a huge middle school following. Song has a horrible knack for getting stuck in your head. Couldn't she have picked backup singers and dancers that weren't 25 and better than her? The emotional part really moves me...)

Christer Sjörgen - I Love Europe (Sweden's Wayne Newton. That's the only reason he made the finals with this song.)

Sibel - That is Where I'll Go (Also came out of the losers' bracket.)

Now watch each of those about three times, and then rewatch the best parts to simulate highlight clips before and after commercials, add some comic relief, and you've got one episode of Melodifestivalen. Even though each new performance is live, they're still such carbon copies from week to week and from hour to hour that you would never know the difference. Somehow, it was still quite entertaining. Once again, I hope you enjoy.

On a totally unrelated note, we've heard there's some confusion about who's writing. We always write each post independently. Either Miranda posts, or I post. We never flip back and forth between paragraphs. I have not referred to myself in the third person, yet, and she does not refer to herself in the third person either. I also refer to my coworkers quite often, and if the post is overly long, you can probably blame me. Lastly, I tend to use parentheses way too often, and probably don't punctuate correctly when closing a parenthesized statement or a quotation. I think there is usually a hint in every post where one of us refers to the other by name, or does something to give away the identity of the author. Hope that helps!