The second live show of Dansbandskampen took place this evening. And whilst we unfortunately weren’t live in the arena as we were last week, we did watch it on tv – with great enjoyment of course!
In our reasoning before as to why we like dansband music (and we do feel the need to explain it, yes!), we’ve always said that part of the reason we like it so much as that it veers so much towards schlager a lot of the time. However, we’ve also readily admitted that much of it goes into old-man-country-music territory too, and that’s the side we don’t like. And whilst last week’s show was indeed schlager-tastic, this week’s show unfortunately stayed all too true to dansband’s country roots. Still, as we said above, it was an enjoyable show anyway. And with dansband, when it’s amazing, it’s brilliantly amazing – and so when it’s shit, it’s brilliantly shit too! And tonight there really were a few times when we actually had to remind ourselves that ”oh my God, this is ACTUALLY primetime tv on a Saturday evening in Sweden”! Love it.
And what of the performances….
Well, in a total turnaround, our two least favourite dansbands last week, gave us our two favourite performances this week. Wizex did an interesting performance of Salem Al Fakir’s ‘Keep On Walking’, complete with piano theatrics. And Donnez performed a dansband schlager arrangement of ‘Kom Ihåg Mig’ by Lars Winnerbäck. And oh we think we’re in love with the oh so handsome lead singer of Donnez.
Pure Divine bounded on to the stage with the same charismatic energy that they did last week. That lead singer is adorable! And they did The Ark’s ‘The Worrying Kind’ very well. Patrik’s Combo were given the chance to go all schlager on a silver platter, when they were given dansband classic, ‘Aj Aj Aj, Det Bultar Och Det Bankar’. However, they didn’t exactly look comfortable doing it and it seemed a bit of a wasted opportunity.
Jeppez & The Cowboys are one of the dansbands that thrive on this style of country music, and needless to say performed a dull version of Katy Perry’s ‘Hot & Cold’. And Willez only really came across as Jeppez & The Cowboys Juniors, when they performed Per Gessle’s ‘Här Kommer Alla Känslorna’. Although we do still have faith that the latter can be amazing in future weeks.
Our two favourite dansbands in this competition didn’t disappoint though. Elisa’s gave another charming performance this week, helped along mostly by the beauty and warmth of Elisa herself. And we’ve now taken a full on shining to the accordion player too! As with last week when they pulled a spectacular dansband arrangement of The Killers out of the bag, this week they did great things to Kent’s ‘Utan Dina Andetag’. CC & Lee meanwhile had an equally large task of doing something with ‘Känn Ingen Sorg För Mig Göteborg’ by Håkan Hellström. But they nailed it, especially with their fantastic vocals throughout.
Finally, Sweetshots were one of our favourites last week. But this week they gave an absolutely abysmal performance of a truly terrible arrangement of Lady GaGa’s ‘Poker Face’. So bad, it actually looked like sabotage! And as a result, they were voted out of the competition and sent home!
WE LOVE THIS SHOW!
