Melodifestivalen 2012 commenced last night. A fabulous 90 minute show – completely stolen by one woman, her song, and its performance. Queen Loreen and ‘Euphoria’.
She didn’t just raise the bar – she completely set a brand new one! We’ve not seen anything else like it at Melodifestivalen before, and nor have we seen such an overwhelming reaction online afterwards. We have no idea if she’ll win Melodifestivalen 2012, but we find it hard to imagine anyone improving on what she accomplished last night. Needless to say, she made the final anyway. These were the results;
To the final
Loreen: ‘Euphoria’
Dead By April: ‘Mystery’
To the second chance round
Sean Banan: ‘Sean den förste Banan’
Thorsten Flinck & Revolutionsorkestern: ‘Jag Reser Mig Igen’
SVT won’t allow any of those performances to be put on YouTube until the whole contest is over, HOWEVER, they are streaming the full show over at their website right now. Only until tomorrow night though, we believe. If you missed Loreen – watch it! You won’t regret it, we promise.
Some observations about the rest of the show;
- The new hosts were fab, and did a great job. Particularly Sarah Dawn Finer and Ana Gina.
- The whole entrance to the stage thing is sort of excruciating. And Sweden really is the last place on earth it should be featured – considering the element of ego that’s required to walk it with some personality. It’s fine for someone like Sean Banan or Loreen. But it was cringeworthy and embarrassing for the likes of Abalone Dots and The Moniker.
- Likewise, the short videos introducing the artists are much too WTF. WTF?!
- Sean Banan. He converted us earlier in the week with that fab chorus. But he lost all goodwill we had towards him by the time the show was over. The breaking point was when the camera was panning in on each of the four artists who would learn if they had either made the final, gone to Andra Chansen, or finished in 5th. And all we were drawn to was Sean’s face desperately trying to think of something – anything – that MIGHT amuse viewers at home. There’s ‘comedy’, and then there’s forced silliness bordering on awkward desparation. Sean sank way below the latter.
- We love the interval act – where each week an artist will reinterpret a Melodifestivalen classic that never got out of its heat. Last night it was Soundtrack of our Lives taking on Dilba’s ‘Try Again’. And the single is out now and already climbing Swedish iTunes.
- We also love that Edward Af Sillén and Daniel Réhn are back as the show’s scriptwriters. There was some amazing banter and comments coming from the hosts, but really the appreciation of their return was solidified by this little performance that they dreamt up. In summary – making fun of the notion that Melodifestivalen is just for the gays. You must check this out;
Finally, the songs that didn’t make it any further and left the competition.
Coming 5th and 6th were our own personal favourites after Loreen – Afro-Dite’s ‘The Boy Can Dance’ and Marie Serneholt’s ‘Salt & Pepper’. We would have loved to have seen them progress further in the competition and we’re a little bit crushed that they’re out. But in truth – being women performing up-tempo songs, they were sort of likely to be compared to Loreen by voters. Even subconsciously. And there really is no comparison. Still, they’ve left us with two songs that we’re gonna be playing a lot, and two performances worthy of some level of repeated viewing.
Then in 7th and 8th place came two songs that we suspected (and hoped!) might cancel each other out – Abalone Dots with ‘På Väg’ and The Moniker with ‘I Want To Be Chris Isaak’. If you look closely enough then there are elements of both that are quite nice. But compared to the rest of what went on last night, they’re a little un-noteworthy in comparison. And so unsurprisingly fell to the wayside after voters had had their way.
Photos from the night – including the credit to the photo at the top of this article – are over at SVT’s website.
