Of the 43 songs competing at Eurovision 2016, twelve of them were written, co-written or produced by Swedes — that’s over a quarter. Will any of them finish on top and who stands the best chance?
Azerbaijan: Samra with “Miracle”
(Amir Aly, Jakob “Jakke” Erixson, Henrik Wikström)
For the eighth year in a row, Azerbaijan sends a song written by Swedes. Originally penned for Molly Pettersson-Hammar as a potential Melodifestivalen entry, “Miracle” ended up making its way to Samra.
Bulgaria: Poli Genova with “If Love Was a Crime”
(Borislav Milanov, Sebastian Arman, Joacim Bo Persson, Poli Genova)
Poli Genova returns to the contest with a team of Bulgarian and Swedish composers, hoping to avenge her early exit in 2011 via the hip-pop anthem “If Love Was a Crime”.
Cyprus: Minus One with “Alter Ego”
(Minus One, Thomas G:son)
The boys of Minus One wrote their feisty rock entry with help from Swedish Eurovision veteran Thomas G:Sson. This is the second time a Swede has been involved in a Cypriot entry, the last time being with Ivi Adamou in 2012. She earned 12 points from Sweden that year.
Czech Republic: Gabriela Guncikova with “I Stand”
(Christian Schneider, Sara Biglert, Aidan O’Connor)
A Swedish-Irish team with Eurovision experience composed “I Stand” for the Czech Republic. Rumour has it the state broadcaster had already decided on another act, but after hearing “I Stand” it ditched them in favour of the fierce Gabriela Gincikova, whose voice suits the dark power-ballad rather well.
Georgia: Nika Kocharov & Young Georgian Lolitaz with “Midnight Gold”
(Kote Kalandadze, Thomas G:son)
After Georgia received questionable reviews on their experimental indie-rock entry “Midnight Gold,” the broadcaster called in Thomas G:Son to give the song a revamp — adding a booming EDM climax to the previously monotonous track.
Lithuania: Donny Montell with “I’ve Been Waiting For This Night”
(Jonas Thander, Beatrice Robertsson)
Donny had been working closely with multiple Swedish producers on his album, and ended up selecting the synth-pop number “I’ve Been Waiting For This Night” as his Eurovision entry.
Malta: Ira Losco with “Walk On Water”
(Lisa Desmond, Tim Larsson, Tobias Lundgren, Molly Pettersson Hammar, Ira Losco)
In another Scandinavian production, Molly Pettersson-Hammar once again manages to sneak her way into Eurovision 2016 — this time as a co-writer of Ira Losco’s gospel flavoured drum and bass anthem “Walk on Water”.
Moldova: Lidia Isac with “Falling Stars”
(Gabriel Alares, Sebastian Lestapier, Ellen Berg, Leonid Gutkin)
Lidia Isac represents her country with “Falling Stars” — a dance track written by the same Swedish/Russian team that pushed Polina Gagarina into second place for Russia last year.
Norway
(Agnete Johnsen, Gabriel Alares, Ian Curnow)
In addition to his entry in Moldova, Swede Gabriel Alares co-wrote Agnete’s icy R&B ballad “Icebreaker” along with Ian Curnow and Agnete herself.
Russia: Sergey Lazarev “You Are The Only One”
(Philipp Kirkorov, Dimitris Kontopoulos, John Ballard, Ralph Charlie)
This year Russia employed many familiar faces to produce Sergey Lazarev’s colossal “You Are The Only One” — including Gothenburg-based John Ballard, who nearly scored Azerbaijan their second win back in 2013.
Sweden: Frans with “If I Were Sorry”
(Oscar Fogelström, Michael Saxell, Fredrik Andersson, Frans Jeppsson-Wall)
Sweden — unsurprisingly — joins the list. As we recently found out, the Scandinavian nation has a tendency to write songs for their European counterparts, only to end up having them stealing their own thunder. Can they fight off mega competition from their own citizens, or will they end up feeling sorry for themselves?
United Kingdom: Joe and Jake with “You’re Not Alone”
(Schwartz Justin J., Benson S. Kanes)
The UK opted for Swedish producers in 2011, 2012 and 2014. “You’re Not Alone” marks the first year that Europe’s “most important music industry” sends a song written and produced entirely by Swedes.
Poll: Best Swedish composed song
You may vote for as many songs as you like, but you can only vote once, so choose wisely! Be sure to check the box next to each act you want to support before pressing submit.
[polldaddy poll=9402344]
Lithuania, Norway, Bulgaria, Malta, Russia… I can’t choise ;c
The ones who wrote the Czech and Bulgarian entries. They should stop using Swedish songwriters though, 99% of the time they just write basic, uninspired songs with cringeworthy lyrics.
And I just thought I was having auditory hallucinations when I decided they all sounded the same……
I am shocked that the BBC have drunk the Kool-aid too!
Write your own songs. This is cheating. Disqualify them all.
1. Chez 2. Norway 3. Bulgaria 4. Malta
Czech Republic. Hope it will be in the Grand Final!!
Azerbaijan
Czech Republic. 😀
@Aaran
thank you 🙂
@Nicky91
This is actually my overall top 3. Totally agree with your comments!
Bulgaria, Czech Rep and Malta for me!
Guys as great as Poli and her song are can we stop calling If Love Was a Crime a hip hop song pleaaaaase! It’s anything but hip hop 😉
my top 3:
1. Bulgaria ( just because Poli slays on stage and she definitely will own the stage in may 🙂 )
2. Malta ( Ira is just amazing, a pure quality singer who never disappoints on stage, pure class)
3. Azerbaijan ( Samra is really a good looking girl, and she’ll score lots of jury votes with her looks)
@Adam
Russia will always win if Russian composers are writing songs for Russian entries. The songs written by Swedish composers for Russian entries not so often enter the top 100 airplay charts of Russia and do not have any commercial success. “Beleive me” is not a song that Dima Bilan picks for his tours. Neither is “Million Voices” for Polina Gagarina and “Get You” for Alexey Vorobyov, for example.
wow there’s a lot of swedish produced songs. When will countries use their representive composers and producers instead of hiring every year a swedish one? I mean it feels like these countries dont have any talents or are afraid to send songs in their own production. Very disapointed! ( I bet all of them will be in the finals)
Bulgaria and Norway. Couldn’t vote for Norway though.
SWEDEN
I have to admit that Joe and Jake’s entry being written by Swedes was a bit shocking. Can they team up again with the Swedes on the following years?
My top 2 (Czech Republic and Bulgaria) are written by Swedes. 🙂
Thank you Sweden!!!!!
@AM Casblancas
Canada can’t participate.
you forgot to put the entry from….. from…. *sigh* from…
what was the name of that country I can’t remember?
c’mon it can’t be that hard…
I mean it’s gotta be big… or at least well known …. or at least popular …. or at least an entry
Well maybe it isn’t that important, yeah that’s probably it, it’s gotta definitively be irrelevant
Sweden successful after 2011.. No, we had a few years between 2007-2010 when things didn’t work out. 2005 too. But before that a top ten result was almost standard.
Where’s Norway in the poll???
It’s the best.
@Darren
Changes in how the winner of Melodifestivalen is selected account for recent Swedish success at Eurovision. In 2011, they expanded the international jury component of the scoring from 6 to 11 countries. This tends to get songs selected which have a greater appeal.
We can’t vote for Norway, because it isn’t on the poll.
The best “swedish” entries this year are from Sweden, Czech Rep., Bulgaria and Norway.
@Mello
I know Sweden is making great achievements in different fields, and their Eurovision success’ go way back to ABBA, but before 2011, Sweden wasn’t really as prominent in Eurovision as they are now, they didn’t even qualify in 2010 and barely qualified in 2008 and 2009. But hey it’s something to be proud of, I am a massive fan of Sweden, I like their culture, language, architecture, music and I hope to visit someday. I’m not disrespecting Sweden’s success’ or anything I’m just asking how it happened, seemingly overnight
@Alex -yep actually! Siva Kaneswaren is Irish, he comes from Dublin. Didn’t know he was involved in the United Kingdom’s entry.
@ Darren
We have been dominating charts all over the world since the Abba phenomenon, we didn’t just get good at music in 2011. We have a deeply rooted history of making good popular music and lesser experienced countries want a piece of what we have. It’s incredible that a nation of 9,5 million inhabitants have so many extremely talented people through the history, and not just at music but pioneering in IT, film, science, polictics, development, business, medicine and literature.
Composer Joacim Bo Persson is composer of macedonian song from 2015
I don’t think that the UK’s song is written entirely by Swedes. S Kanes (AKA Siva Kaneswaran) is a former member of The Wanted, and from what I can tell, he is Irish
I didn’t even know that Bulgarias entry had Swedish involvement. I wonder why everyone opts for a Swedish produced track? Sweden only started getting good at ESC in 2011, but all of a sudden they are the best in Europe?
Anyways, my favourite Swedish produced songs are:
1. Bulgaria
2. Sweden
3. Malta
4. Azerbaijan
You may want to fact-check the caption for Russia…Azerbaijan didn’t win in 2013.
@ Österrike
That’s not true… they reilly loved Italy, Estonia and France, for example, and they wanted to give the trophy to France after listening to half of the songs 🙂
@Ben Rafter If the past years are anything to go by, wiwibloggs will be the most accurate and informative eurovision site to know everything about the rehearsals and hear some realistic opinions! As for the hours, everything given is on CET time.
Oooh, big surprise about the UK song being entirely written by Swedes. I didn’t know… (looks for monocle). 😀
I really like most of these songs. Actually the only ones I don’t like on this list are Georgia and Lithuania. (Sorry to them).
Interestingly on my counts of the amount of times I have personally played each song so far, Russia is 3rd highest, Azerbaijan is 4th, Czech Republic is 5th and Moldova is 6th!!
Hey, just commenting to say that you forgot to put Norway in the poll! 🙂
And the Swedish preview panel was totally biased against the non-Swedish songs….
Will you be reporting on the rehearsals tomorrow? Does anyone also know if for eg when it said Finland was on at 10:00 was that cet or GMT?
The UK and Bulgaria are my two favourite songs this year. I had no idea they were Swedish. It’s going be more efficient in the future just to divvy out the losing songs in the Melodifestivalen to other countries.
Wiwibloggs have you arrived in Stockholm? Will you report from rehearsals tomorrow? 😀
Is Russian not supposed to be in the poll? lol. But anyway, I really hope one day the EBU makes it so that songwriters and composers have to be from the country their trying to represent. We keep hearing the same formulaic songs every year and it does get pretty boring.