It’s an annual smorgasbord of Swedish songs and singers. But this year, comedy won’t be one of the dishes on offer at Melodifestivalen 2019.
And there’s a simple reason for that: Two of this year’s four hosts are comedians.
“We have had humorous intentions to take a stand on, but have not felt the same need for it, we want to vary ourselves and not feel that we follow any fixed template.” Said Executive Producer Christer Bjorkman.
That means comedy acts like Rolandz and Edward Blom won’t feature in this year’s semi-finals. Instead we can expect comedians Marika Carlsson and Kodjo Akolor to do the heavy lifting.
Bjorkman added, “The hosts should be used for entertainment, so the competition doesn’t have to be.”
The change in mix of entries also means this year we’ll hear more ballads.
“The [change in] tonality of the programs means we can afford more ballads. Tempo is elsewhere in the programs.”
“At least four top five entries” in Melodifestivalen 2019
Further news about this year’s entries was also teased between Christmas and New Year.
In that instance, Bjorkman teased the quality of competing songs.
“I have a tradition of listening through the songs with my Norwegian counterpart, Mattias Carlsson. They only have ten songs in Norway, so I had to pick out ten of us who were competing against him. Then if not before I realized that there are very strong songs this year.
“I never forget when he played Alexander Rybak in 2009. It was like no idea for us to even have a melody festival, we would never be able to upset it. But this time it was Mattias who got to call me.
“This year it [convincing established artists to compete] has not even been an issue, because there have been so many interesting names at all. [We have] maybe at least four who can get up in the top five.”
The first semi-final of Melodifestivalen 2019 will air in one month’s time on SVT1 at 20:00 CET.
Ok, Nice news.
I hope the songs could be more diverse in genres. The other National Finals seem to have much more diverse selections and take risks, besides the radio pop genre.
Good, because the comedy the past few years have been so bad.. It reached a new low with Fab Freddie last year.. Im not expecting much from this year either though.. Ever since about 2010/2011 the interval acts and hosts have been poor. We might have the best national final in terms of songs but when it comes to entertainment in between the songs and results etc we are seriously worse than Malta, Latvia, etc..
I can’t wait! Sounds much better than the slug feast of 2018! And a crammed line.up, it’s going to be a massacre!
After Hasse, Owe and Rolandz’s (lol) success and qualification to the grand final that sincerely gave happy moods to audience of all kinds and ages, I thought this will be a thing in Melodifestivalen from then on. At least the hosts will do something about it for next year.
“The hosts should be used for entertainment, so the competition doesn’t have to be.” Bjorkman nails it once again! Fuldans last year were cringy and embarrassing, a farce they went direct to final wheres the adventurous “Icarus” was horrifically robbed in broad daylight, man last year’s Melfest was so bleak, but hopefully with the fab line-up this year we will see a big glow-up like 10 years ago where MF 2009 was a massive improvement on MF 2008.
What was so adventurous about Icarus? It was a average Broadway musical number.
And Fuldans went through because it’s Robert Gustafsson, he is a legend among some.
Are you joking? MF 2008 was the better song contest compared to MF 2009, artists like BWO, Sanna Nielsen, Perelli, Therese Andersson, Sibel, Nordman were great, just to name a few. Only Sarah Dawn Finer and Alcazar were good in MF 2009, and the winning song wasn’t nearly as good as Hero, TBH.
I really look forward to my 5th Melodifestivalen experience! I know Sweden will give us another entry where they can be proud of!
Sounds dull. Hoping for a big swedish flop
what’s wrong with you?
Oooooh you’re hard
haha your friends probably think your a lot of fun. Irony!