A big improvement on Heat 1, the weekend’s second segment of the contest brought the show back to being an exciting and enjoyable watch. We had our first two great songs; ‘Manboy’ and ‘Come and Get Me Now’. And our first, and so far only great performance; ‘Manboy’. And rightly so, it was ‘Manboy’ that won the public vote and qualified directly for the final (in both weeks, the best song has won in our opinion!). The song opened the show, and it was three minutes of pure pop – with a killer chorus. And Eric Saade gave it an amazing performance, taking the song up to even higher levels. The dance break in the middle eight was perfect, and of course the on stage shower during the closing bars was just brilliant, and worked so well. Plus, despite his youth and inexperience, Eric didn’t give off a hint of nerves, and just radiated complete confidence. It was by far our favourite performance of this year’s contest so far, and we’d even go so far as to say that it’ll remain a classic for years to come.
Eric was joined in the final by Andreas Johnson’s song ‘We Can Work It Out’. Another one we really enjoyed, it’s probably our favourite of his Melodifestivalen entries so far. In contrast to Eric, it was a really simple performance – just Andreas singing the song, but that’s exactly what the track demanded. It was quite anthemic, with a very strong backing melody. It definitely deserved its place in the final, although there were other songs that missed out, that were more to our liking.
The two Andra Chansen round places went to ‘Underbart’ by Kalle Moraeus and Orsa Spelmän, and ‘Sucker For Love’, by Pauline. ‘Underbart’ was a very pleasant listen. Old fashioned folk, with a celtic feel, but with a very catchy chorus – and a key change of course! We really didn’t like ‘Sucker For Love’ at all though. It’s a nod to a retro sound that was in vogue a couple of years back but just sounds really overdone and dated now. We’re very surprised that Sweden voted this through. Especially over some of the songs that were eliminated.
As always, SVT are removing all videos of the top four performances until all heats have taken place, but here are the bottom four, in the order they placed;
We loved this! More for the performance than the actual song itself though. That performance is everything you want from a dance track at Melodifestivalen. Those outfits, those dancers, the singer being dragged along the stage floor – brilliant! We liked the music in the song, the beats and synths, but there wasn’t really enough of a melody to make the song memorable enough. We hope to be proved wrong though, once we’ve given the studio version a few more listens.
Ridiculous. Not funny in 2008, and not funny now!
This was easily our close second favourite of the night (and of the contest so far) after ‘Manboy’. A charming song with instant hooks, great melodies, and of course it borders on being schlager. It certainly shouldn’t have only finished in 7th place!
Finally, we really liked this one too. A beautiful little song that we expect to be listening to quite a lot over the coming months. But bless her, the vocal delivery was questionable. She just sounded like she was really nervous the whole time, and so the vocals were a bit too shakey. It still didn’t deserve to come last though, and we thought it might have had a good chance of getting an Andra Chansen place.
And onto next week then! Heat 3 is the one we’re looking forward to most, with Elin Lanto, Alcazar, Darin, Erik Linder, and TWO girlbands! Plus, we’re going to be attending it in Gothenburg!
