As you would expect, it’s once again totally taken over by Melodifestivalen songs. But there are still some positions in there that you wouldn’t expect to see. Eric Saade and Timoteij ahead of Salem Al Fakir? Ola ahead of Darin? And LINDA PRITCHARD top 10, whilst Peter Joback, Alcazar, Jessica Andersson, Pernilla Wahlgren and so many other songs that performed so much better in the contest, languish way beneath her? Then of course there’s Nanne at number 7, ahead of 80% of this year’s Melodifestivalen songs. The explanation is simple though. All of those artists achieving a higher position in the charts, were the same artists that got out of bed early last week, dragged themselves out in the cold, and stood in shopping centres whilst people queued up to have their picture taken with them, and more importantly, get a CD single signed!
We learned for definite last week, that any CD sold at all of those shopping centre meet and greets is actually chart eligible. We’d suspected so, but still had our doubts. After all, how on earth is it all regulated? These CD’s are sold by random runners who go up and down the queue of people waiting to meet the artist, and exchange the CD for a certain amount of cash, usually 20SEK. Each artist has boxes of their singles with them, but who’s to say that the reports that are sent through to the charts company, aren’t exaggerated in any way. Obviously, fraud and lies simply isn’t the Swedish way normally, and of course we doubt that there is anything but honestly and transparency involved here, but in our experience, if any industry is going to be corrupt – it’ll be the music industry!
Aside from all that though, we think it’s absolutely wonderful that the artists who got off their arse and out and about last week to meet all of the fans that came into Stockholm for the Melodifestivalen final, were rewarded with better chart positions than their counterparts. Lovestoned climbed from 45 to 21 in their second week on the chart, despite only finishing 6th in their heat. Getty Domein gets a re-entry into the chart thanks to his efforts. And Andreas Johnson manages to climb into the top 10 too. Eric Saade and Ola were also rewarded for having to get up early on Sunday morning, despite being exhausted after the week of rehearsals, the show, and the after party on the Saturday night, to go and so a signing at a shopping centre! Most noticeable gain though, as we mentioned already, goes to Linda Pritchard – eliminated in her heat, but still managing to be charting above a lot of the songs from the final, and all of the songs from andra chansen, and every other heat!
Oh, and on a seperate note, congratulations to Salem Al Fakir, who debuts at number one on the albums chart with ‘Ignore This’, and Neo, who enters at number 9 with this album, ‘Human Frontier’.
