The fourth and final heat of this year’s Melodifestivalen. A last shot to save that sorry excuse for a line-up that is the Melodifestivalen final as it stands right now. Or failing that, at the very least we all want a decent show to sit through tomorrow night.
This afternoon we attended the rehearsals of each of the eight songs. And here’s what we made of the lot of them;
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Army of Lovers – Rockin’ the Ride
Låtskrivare: Alexander Bard, Henrik Wikström, Per QX, Andreas Öhrn, Jean-Pierre Barda
Well it all gets off to a very good start this week. The best catwalk entrance of the year, or in fact since the catwalk was introduced last year. La Camilla owns that platform like nobody has ever worked any catwalk anywhere anytime anyhow.
Then comes the eye opening performance. Definitely the biggest and campest show of Melodifestivalen 2013. It’s not like they’re swinging from the chandeleirs, or riding unicorns or anything like that. It’s just more a case of them lording over the stage like they’re genuine legends who never really went away. And they look like they’re enjoying it too, which is always important but often forgotten. The only gripe we might have about the performance is that we just don’t know where to look! There’s so much choice. So you have to decide whether to focus on La Camilla posing, pouting, and touching herself on the throne, Alexander Bard and Jean-Pierre Barda behaving like two OTT and ADHT foot soldiers in front of her, the bizarre six packed ladies, or the ph’nom’n’lly swoonsome and naked dancer, Thomas Benstem. No prizes for guessing where we settled on in the end though.
Now though….the song. It’s a tad uncategorisable. Which is probably what they were going for, knowing them. And it’s all very mental – like skittles hyper mental. But it’s an enjoyable bit of fun. Actually a lot of fun. We’re not sure if we’d wanna be giving it multiple listens on the iPod, without the visual of the performance to accompany it. But in the context of Melodifestivalen, it’s perfect really. We can’t imagine they’ll be making any sort of a comeback with this song outside of Melodifestivalen though.
HOWEVER.
There’s absolutely no shadow of a doubt, no question about it: The Melodifestivalen 2013 final needs Army of Lovers in it. So badly, that at this stage it should be getting on its knees in between La Camilla’s spread legs and diamante crucifix emblazoned undergarments, and BEGGING for it.
Lucia Piñera – Must Be Love
Låtskrivare: Peter Kvint, Jonas Myrin
This would have been a lot more enjoyable had we never heard Adele’s ‘Rolling In The Deep’. But we have. And so has everybody else on the planet. Well over two years ago. So why phone in such a half baked pastiche of it now?
Coming to Melodifestivalen in 2015: Lucia Pinera submits her own take on Emeli Sandé’s ‘Read All About It’.
It really is high time that Melodifestivalen stopped all this accepting of entries that are soundalike versions of international hits. The Swedish music industry and all of the talent within it is so much better than this. And a lot more creative too. We all know that.
Back to Lucia though. And it’s more bad news. What in God’s name was everything thinking when it came to the styling? She looks awful and her dancers look awful too, thanks to a badly judged combination of colours (black, luminous green and yellow?!…) and fabrics (ranging from PVC to ballet gauze). It’s an eye sore as it is, without even taking into consideration that it doesn’t suit the song one tiny bit.
She has a good voice on her though, bless her. But it’s gonna struggle to make itself heard over the all the other mess and circumstance that’s coming out of the performance.
Robin Stjernberg – You
Låtskrivare: Robin Stjernberg, Linnea Deb, Joy Deb och Joakim Harestad Haukaas
Robin Stjernberg takes a leaf out of his fellow Idol graduate Amanda Fondell’s book, and bravely goes forth with a more complex of melodies.
Like ‘Dumb’ last week, ‘You’s melody is something different to what we usually hear in this set-up, and something which takes more time to appreciate than what is the standard tune belted out on the Melodifestivalen stage.
Unlike Amanda tough, Robin’s voice isn’t just as complicated as the melody it’s delivering. His is much more palatable and less challenging than hers, and so viewers will be able to connect with it a lot easier than they did with her last week. He’s a fantastic singer is Robin – a matter of fact which has resulted in him being thrown quite a few difficult notes. But he pulls them off immensely. He’s more than capable of it.
And that leads us to his performance. And again, he’s more than competent. So he really doesn’t need all that faff going on behind him with all of those dancers. It detracts from the song and it detracts from him. And they’re not just totally unnecessary, they’re a little bit invasive.
In any other week this would be an obvious qualifier. But SVT have dealt him a cruel blow of sorts, by putting him in the same week as Ulrik Munther, who is performing a song in a similar genre. We expect Ulrik to take a lot of Robin’s potential fanbase and votes. But that’s gonna be a shame, as Robin is actually a much better singer. And this is a much better song.
Sylvia Vrethammar – Trivialitet
Låtskrivare: Thomas G:son, Calle Kindbom, Mats Tärnfors
LOVED THIS! Against all odds. No really – ALL odds, it’s the clear favourite to finish dead last in its heat tomorrow night.
We enjoyed it immensely though. Latin flavoured, 60s flavoured, and with more than a little bit of a camp flavour to it too. It’s like Emma Bunton’s ‘Crickets Sing For Annamaria’ meets Emma Bunton’s ‘I’ll Be There’. HOW could that fail?!
The performance she gives of it is a bit of a mess though. But then if anything, that just adds to the whole charm. A seemingly oblivious old dear wandering around on the stage in between life sized perspex letters spelling out her name. She’s bewildered! You can tell she never thought she’d be doing all of this at this very stage in her life. But you’re very glad that she is. At times during the rehearsal, she was just tripping over the letters, searching for the cameras, but giggling the whole time and rolling her eyes all “oooh, what am I like eh?!”.
LOVE IT!
Ralf Gyllenhammar – Bed on Fire
Låtskrivare: Ralf Gyllenhammar, David Wilhelmson
Well mark this one down as the surprise of the competition. The hard rocker who has publicly denounced Melodifestivalen, but we’re loving his song something rotten. So much so, that it’s actually our favourite song of this week. (subject to change).
It’s the dramatics and the theatrics, both in his performance and within the production of the song. Just wait until that moment in the song after he first sings the line “ashes to ashes, dust to dust“, and when he screams “BUURRRRNNNNN“. It’s big. And it’s accompanied by actual fire too. That always hits home the point.
This is something that we’re gonna be playing long after Melodifestivalen, despite the fact that it doesn’t fit in with the vast majority of what we keep on the iPod. Who knew?!
One thing he needs to work on though are the lyrics – in that he actually forgot them during TWO of the four rehearsals this afternoon. And also, his voice kept cracking during a lot of those shrieks. And that doesn’t sound very good either. But so long as he sorts out both of those by tomorrow night, he’s a definite qualifier. And he may even cannibalise a lot of votes that would otherwise have gone to Ulrik Munther and Robin Stjernberg – potentially putting them in a little bit of trouble.
Behrang Miri – Jalla Dansa Sawa
Låtskrivare: Behrang Miri, Anderz Wrethov, Firas Razak Tuma, Tacfarinas Yamoun
We like this song, as we said back on Monday. Plus, it’s a fun performance. Should it end up in the final, it’ll be a great deal better than most of what’s already in there.
BUT. It really does feel like you’ve heard and seen it all before. And that’s probably because you have. Between Jessy Matador’s ‘Allez Ole Ola’, Swingfly’s ‘Me & My Drum’, and Mary N’Diaye’s ‘Gosa’, it’s all been done. To be fair to him, he does it well. But still. It’s not the most exciting thing on stage this week.
All the above could probably have been forgiven in any other week. But in the same heat as Lucia Pinera’s blatant and downright rude copy-cat shenanigans, by the time you get to this it’s all a bit “right. enough now“. Although having said that – the Swedes clearly aren’t feeling as jaded about it all as we are. So we expect this to do well tomorrow night.
Terese Fredenwall – Breaking The Silence
Låtskrivare: Terese Fredenwall, Simon Petrén
Deathly boring and without even a strong vocal to elevate it any higher. A place in this year’s contest absolutely wasted. It’s not even as if the guitar quota needed filling out this week. Like Elin Petersson’s ‘Island’ last week, this is nice. But ultimately pointless.
Ulrik Munther – Tell the World I’m Here
Låtskrivare: Peter Boström, Thomas G:son, Ulrik Munther
It’s been no secret since even before the whole thing started four weeks ago, that this song right here is somewhat the chosen one. The one that everyone is expecting to win. And the one that a lot of people want to win too. Incidentally, Ulrik’s rehearsal of it today, was the only song out of the eight that Christer Björkman came to watch. If that means anything.
Although while everyone else seems to love this (it’s the clear favourite to qualify tomorrow night, and to win the whole thing in two weeks time), we’re not really feeling it all that much. It’s good. He’s good. But it’s just not as amazing as we expected it to be, or as amazing as we hoped this year’s Melodifestivalen winner would be. The production is great (so good in fact, that it swallows up his vocal at times), and the performance is fantastic. But we feel that both are almost wasted on a not-as-amazing-as-it-needed-to-be song. But then having said that, we’ve actually never liked an Ulrik Munther song. So we’re obviously just not getting it. We just hoped that this would be the exception, that’s all.
“Tell the world I’m here…to change it” is a really nice lyric.
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The show airs tomorrow night at 7pm UK time, streaming at SVT’s website. And it’ll stay online for 24 hours afterwards.
You can already watch 60 second clips of yesterday’s camera rehearsals right here.
And check back here on Sunday for our full breakdown of the results.
