Half an hour or so after watching Heat 2 of Melodifestivalen, the annual contest which selects Sweden’s song for the Eurovision Song Contest, I still have the melody of one of the songs stuck in my head. The song, “A Million Years” by Mariette is really very good: it’s memorable, and was performed well. It’s the first song in this year’s finals which I think genuinely has a chance of making it to Eurovision.
The other song which made it directly through to the final was “Good Lovin” by Benjamin Ingrosso. Benjamin was always a shoe-in to make it to the final. With his teenage-girl-friendly good looks, and having previously won Junior Melodifestivalen, he was well-known to the audience, and received a large round of applause. His mother, Pernilla Wahlgren has previously competed in the contest, and his uncle is one of the guys from Swedish House Mafia, so he also comes with a Swedish show-biz royalty background. I thought the song was okay.
Other competitors included Roger Pontare, a Sami singer who competed for Sweden twice in Eurovision, and a couple of other singers/rappers I’d never previously heard of. Ola Salo, who was a member of “The Ark” (they were in Eurovision with “Not The Worrying Kind” was a song-writer for one of the bands.
There were also lots of great showtune numbers in the show, and one of the co-hosts, David Lindgren, even stripped to his shorts. It wasn’t completely gratuitous, as it was part of a tribute to previous Melodifestivalen numbers, and a reference to Viktor and Samir from last year. He joked he had a “pappakrop” (a dad’s body). Yeah, sure. “Pull the other one” and take it from someone who has one, David.
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