Saturday, February 28, 2015

Just a minute....of this week's Melodifestivalen songs

Will week 4's selection do anything to change my (negative view) of this year's Melodifestivalen entries?  Let's have a listen and check them out. 

"Don't Say No" - Midnight Boy.  I'm not familiar with this guy's work, and he seems to be more famous for a certain YouTube video than anything else.  Well, on first listen I like this!  Clearly very influenced by Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round" - one of my favourite pop songs of the 80s - and MB himself comes over like a Poundland Pete Burns.  This won't do anything and will probably prop up the bottom of tonight's scoreboard, but I've finally found a song I might want to listen to again. 

"Black Swan" - Caroline Wennergren.  She's back after a few years' absence, but straight into the 'slot of doom' and I can't see this getting anywhere.  It's a dramatic, retro-styled song with little James Bond theme influences, although this kind of thing's been tried already in recent years in Melodifestivalen ("Killing Me Tenderly"/"Never Been Here Before" and probably a few others) so it's all sounding a bit dated by now. 

"Building It Up" - JTR.  They've taken a bit of One Direction, a bit of The Wanted and some 5 Seconds of Summer and put it into the boy-pop blender and out came "Building It Up".  It's generic boyband fodder and its success will depend on just how much they will appeal to their demographic/target audience on the night. 

"Guld och gröna skogar" - Hasse Andersson.  Not my thing at all, but this kind of folk/country music has its fans, he's a well known personality and that might be enough to get him to AC.  Hopefully not though, as I wouldn't want to see it stealing a qualification place from a better song. 

"Make Me (La La La)" - Dinah Nah.  She has pink hair and the coolest name, and this might just have enough contemporary pop/dance appeal to qualify to something or other, but unfortunately it's a little on the generic side for me and the repeated la-la-las remind me of "La La Love".  Which, if I remember, was particularly popular in Sweden so this might bode well for Dinah?

"Ett Andetag" - Annika Herlitz.  A.K.A. the voice of the Swedish version of "Let It Go" from Frozen.  This is a big old fashioned schlager ballad complete with - yes of course - a wind machine, and it will probably have certain sections of the schlager community in raptures.  It doesn't appeal to me though.

"Heroes" - Måns Zelmerlow.  Out of the light like a star like a hero!  Here comes Måns to save Melodifestivalen!  Based on the short clip it's a contemporary dance-pop song (the Swedish press have compared it to David Guetta's "Lovers On The Sun"), there's some big gimmicky staging, and while it may not be much of a song compared to "Cara Mia" or "Hope And Glory", I like what I've heard so far and I'm going to like the full song too.  

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