Saturday, March 9, 2013

Who Can Win Melodifestivalen 2013?

Whatever you may say about the schlager festival that is Melodifestivalen at the end of the day it will always be the most revered national selection there is and will always have a certain element of magic to it. This year though it has taken some strange turns and some very big surprises have occurred. The question that now remains is who to select as the winner of Melodifestivalen. Who should represent Sweden on homeground? I shall offer few thoughts....

Ulrik Munther will open tonight's show with his fairly formulaic Melodifestivalen song Tell The World I'm Here, not a bad effort but he does appear to have fallen out of favour with Christer Bjorkman. It's not the best song of the night and given the presence of so many male soloists and so many acts targeting the teen girl age group I find it difficult to see him getting a massive televote. However he may score well with the international juries.

David Lindgren follows Ukrik with a similar genre of song. The two of them drew for third place last year with David picking up more televotes than Ulrik. Though his song is good it is far from outstanding tonight and will certainly struggle given the running order position. David is followed by the lukewarm State of Drama and their good *yawn* song Falling. Another group who will be cannibalised in the televote, probably because of Yohio, they could pick up votes from the international juries.

In fourth we have Anton Ewald, the pick of some of the Swedish newspapers and leading the plays on Spotify. Personally I think this song is good but this would be a bad choice for Eurovision as it would be very difficult to organise the backing vocals without pre-recorded ones. Fifth in the running order is the only female act, Louise Hoffsten and her song Only The Dead Fish Follow The Stream, I like this but I cannot imagine myself picking up the phone and voting for it nor can I see it getting massive points from International Juries.

Sixth we have one of the favourites, Ralf Gyllenhammar, with his song Bed On Fire. In my opinion this is the most likely winner tonight. This is such a strong song and is so well performed from a technical perspective that this is certainly going to go top three tonight. If this is leading when the international juries have voted then this could well take the televote too.

After Ralf is my second favourite act, Ravaillacz, I think that this would be an ideal song to represent Sweden but for some reason I cannot help but wonder will this get any points from juries? Then it is followed by a more serious joke act, Sean Banan. Once again I can't see this getting to many jury votes, but I expect to see this in the top 5.

Robin Stjernberg follows with his song You, personally I think this would be a very strong choice but given that it came from Andra Chansen it probably will not win. Finally we have Yohio. OR The Ark less a number of years. This is an unusual favourite. Though SVT are pushing it for the win I find it difficult to believe this has mass appeal across Europe, however I do think they have a good song.

Whatever happens tonight it is going to be very, very close and there will be no landslide winner. I expect jury votes to left right and center and the public winner will not get 20% of the vote.

My votes are:
12 - Ralf Gyllenhammar
10 - Ravaillacz
8 - Robin Stjernberg
6 - Yohio
4 - Louise Hoffsten
2 - David Lindgren
1 - Sean Banan

My Predictions:
1st - Ralf Gyllenhammar
2nd - Yohio (by less than 10 points)
3rd Robin Stjernberg

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