Melodifestivalen
This has got nothing to do with the regular themes of this blog, except that it’s about Sweden. Our selection procedure for Eurovision Song Contest - the “Melodifestivalen” or “Melody festival” - started a couple of weeks ago. I’ve missed both semi-finals that have been shown so far - we have four, and then a sort of extra final called “second chance”, where the people who almost won at the semi-finals get to compete with each other for a couple of additional spots at the actual final. But, thanks to youtube, I’m managing to keep up fairly well with the contest.
Why am I even interested? Most of the music is absolute crap. But then again, I’m a closet elitist bitch who likes to heckle people in my spare time (don’t tell anyone). Since my whole family is very musical we can watch it together and suffer. Nothing makes you feel as united as shared disdain for other people. There’s also another aspect to it: I like the way this is a huge event that the whole country, and later all of Europe, can relate to. For a little while we put away our political differences and just have some fun with really bad pop music. It’s rather like huge sports events, except I actually understand music, while sports will always be fundamentally uninteresting to me.
Of course, not all of the entries in Melodifestivalen or even Eurovision suck. Have a really quick look at this video (Swedish Television is cracking down on YouTube making them remove all the entries), and please note the huge audience even though this isn’t even our final:
I love the sound of these guys, reminds me of Scissor Sisters (of which I am as you can probably figure out a fan).