A month after the end of Eurovision 2014, and Sweden’s SVT is already calling on songwriters to dream up songs for Melodifestivalen 2015. In recent years interest in the glamourous Swedish song contest has grown and grown. Last year, songwriters submitted a total of 2,686 songs. Interestingly, only 20% of them were written by women. But SVT wants to change that in 2015.
Producers say they want women to represent at least 50% of all songwriters selected to compete in the four semi-finals.
Christer Björkman, the director, put it like this:
We’re very proud and happy with the 3rd place in Eurovision 2014. This feeling will help us work even better. As every year, we want to see differentiations in styles, genres and languages used in the competing songs. Variety and difference are keywords for Melodifestivalen.
Sweden doesn’t lack for female talent. Sandra Bjurman, for instance, wrote Azerbaijan’s Eurovision songs in 2010 and 2012, and in 2011—when Baku won with “Running Scared”.
From the 1st till the 16th of September, songwriters will have the chance to upload their songs on SVT.se/melodifestivalen. For more information click here.
Sweden the country famous for equal rights for men and women is now discriminating against men. If only 20% of the songwriters are women then that means a woman’s song has a better chance of getting into melodifestivalen and men’s songs have to be great. Imagine 1000 songs are submitted and only 200 are women and 800 are men. 32 Songs qualify so 16 from men 16 from women. That means 8% of the women’s songs are going to qualify and only 2% of the men’s songs will qualify. And since around 2500 songs are entered that makes it less… Read more »
Everything is fine by me for as long as I don’t put up with more crap from both Fredrik Kempe or Thomas G:son. Enough is enough for both of them.
I don’t think it should matter whether they song is written by a male or female, we should look for quality rather than gender. With this ruling, they might have to deny good songs just because they’re written by men and 50% of the songs must be written by women now.
imo it doesn’t matter if the songwritter is male orfemale but how good the song is. And if there are more than 50% male songwritters with better song why they shouldnt take part? It has no sense at all
I think we can safely say that Sweden does not lack musical talent by any means.