We attended the dress rehearsal of Melodifestivalen heat 3 in Gothenburg last night. And thankfully, witnessed an all round good show. It’s the strongest heat of Melodifestivalen so far this year. Granted, it’s not been the strongest of years, but this week is a heat that would stand out in any year. We enjoyed all but one of the songs. Plus, there’s a few funny sketches thrown in for the presenters (look out for Måns Zelmerlow’s Japanse commercial and Christine Meltzer re-using Eric Saade’s shower from last week). And the interval act this week is the Blue Man Group.
There are quite a few songs that we really really like. Alcazar’s track ‘Headlines’ was rumoured to be disappointing, but it’s really not. It’s a great dance track, with a typical Alcazar key change thrown into the mix. It’s got a performance as energetic as ‘Stay The Night’, and it ends on a glory note!
Timoteij’s song was our second favourite. ‘Kom’ is an old fashioned schlager song with uptempo beats. Our only gripe was that it should have been performed with a dance routine, rather than having the girls stand there with instruments. But that says more about our odd appreciation of music than it does about the song itself! We think it might struggle to get through though, but only because of the fact that Highlights only came 7th last week, and Timotiej are up against another girlband this week. It’s strange how the only two girlbands in the competition were placed in the same heat.
‘Yeba’ by Getty Domain was the pleasant surprise of the night. We weren’t quite sure what to expect from it, but we certainly weren’t expecting to enjoy it as much as we did! A great performance too. It reminded us of that amazing song from years ago, ‘Alane’ by Wes!
Elin Lanto’s performance is great, especially during the middle eight and beyond. But the song is a bit disappointing. It’s still good – but not amazing like Elin’s songs usually are. Plus, we’ve heard some of the tracks from her forthcoming album and they’re all so much better than this, ‘Doctor Doctor’. But like we said, it’s still a good song. Hopefully it’ll progress further in the competition, but it’s in a tough heat and just isn’t as good as the best there is this week.
Darin’s ballad has been called the best song in the competition from those that had heard it before (and Alexander Bard agreed with that sentiment when we met him a couple of weeks back). But it’s not the contest winning mega song that we were expecting. It’s not even the best ballad this year, in our opinion. But yes, it’s still a good song of course. And we really enjoyed the simple, understated performance of him just standing there and delivering an outstanding vocal.
We prefer the other great ballad in this week’s heat, ‘Hur Kan Jag Tro På Kärlek’ by Erik Linder. It’s catchier, has a really nice melody, and just flows a lot better. It’s a lot more old fashioned than Darin’s song though, which means that the two probably won’t cancel each other out, and we expect both of them to qualify for the final.
The third ballad in the contest was the one we were expecting to like the most, but it’s the only song this week that we don’t like. Composed by Anders Hansson and Sharon Vaughan (the writers of ‘Release Me’ by Agnes), we thought it would be amazing. But it’s really not. It’s actually quite grating, thanks to Johannes Bah Khunke’s vocal delivery. The whole three minutes were just a bit jarring.
And finally, there’s ‘Heaven & Hell’ by Crucified Barbara. An enjoyable performance, a good song, and something a bit different for Melodifestivalen too. Yes they’ve had pop metal before, but never by a girlband. But we liked it.
And that was that. It’s going to be a really exciting show tonight, both for the performances and for the results, so we can’t wait for this evening!
We always get our predicitions wrong, but here we go again anyway;
Direkt til Globen: Darin and Erik Linder
Andra Chansen: Alcazar and Getty Domain
