My review of the 2012 Melody Festival CD album.
Melodifestivalen (The Melody
Festival) is the most popular TV show in Sweden, and undoubtedly the most
entertaining.
I mean, what other TV show can make Dolph Lundgren dress up as a small girl, which actually happened in 2010? (Yes, *that* Dolph Lundgren.) The same Dolph also entered a gay bar to the tune of "Slave to the Rhythm"... Self-irony, yes? Two years in a row, foreign embassies actually protested parts of the show. The Polish embassy didn't like a song by Magnus Uggla about "suspicious Poles", and the Russian embassy took strong exception to a parody version of kalinka. Or something. Don't Polish and Russian diplomats stationed in Stockholm have something better to do? :D
Nominally, the point of Melodifestivalen is to select the Swedish entry in the Eurovision Song Contest, but frankly, I don't think anybody really cares much about *that* little detail. The contest is a happening all its own. And yes, I love every minute of it!
This year's edition is already a real classic. The artists are a motley crew of wanna-bees, has-beens and never-beens. No style of music is too strange to make it to the Melody Festival. Absolutely worst this year: Swedish writer (!) Björn Ranelid tries to recite fake poetry to the tune of Euro-disco. Dadaism? Entertainment value: considerable. Thomas Di Leva looks like the Cosmic Christ, and no, he's not ironic. Actor Thorsten Flinck (who according to urban legend is a homeless morphine addict) turns out to be a pretty good singer, while the heavy metal bands Dynazty and Dead by April turn out to have the best songs in the entire contest - and this is *not* Monsters of Rock. Meanwhile, superstar Charlotte Perelli invests one million Swedish kronor in an extra video screen...and is voted out already in the second round. Other highlights include a bad pastiche of bad 80's pastiches, a song actually called "I wanna be Chris Isaak", a Kirk Douglas look-alike with a heavy "Tron" complex, and a Kate Bush rip. The Burat parody of Sean Banan was priceless. (A *parody* on Burat?!) The riddle of the year: is the metal band Dead by April crypto-Christian?
And you wonder why I and my dear mother are virtually plastered to our TV screens? (My mother, who is retired, actually loved Dynazty and Dead by April.)
So who won? No idea. Frankly, does anybody give a damn? Melodifestivalen is, and will forever remain, the ultimate entertainment show on Swedish television. And, believe it or not, it's actually public service! Something tells me they don't show stuff like this on the PBS...
The entire show is still available on the website of SVT/Melodifestivalen (until April 9), and I suppose a DVD is in the making, but if you want to experience the music for itself, this CD is a must.
Five stars!!!
Euphoria...going up, up, up...
I mean, what other TV show can make Dolph Lundgren dress up as a small girl, which actually happened in 2010? (Yes, *that* Dolph Lundgren.) The same Dolph also entered a gay bar to the tune of "Slave to the Rhythm"... Self-irony, yes? Two years in a row, foreign embassies actually protested parts of the show. The Polish embassy didn't like a song by Magnus Uggla about "suspicious Poles", and the Russian embassy took strong exception to a parody version of kalinka. Or something. Don't Polish and Russian diplomats stationed in Stockholm have something better to do? :D
Nominally, the point of Melodifestivalen is to select the Swedish entry in the Eurovision Song Contest, but frankly, I don't think anybody really cares much about *that* little detail. The contest is a happening all its own. And yes, I love every minute of it!
This year's edition is already a real classic. The artists are a motley crew of wanna-bees, has-beens and never-beens. No style of music is too strange to make it to the Melody Festival. Absolutely worst this year: Swedish writer (!) Björn Ranelid tries to recite fake poetry to the tune of Euro-disco. Dadaism? Entertainment value: considerable. Thomas Di Leva looks like the Cosmic Christ, and no, he's not ironic. Actor Thorsten Flinck (who according to urban legend is a homeless morphine addict) turns out to be a pretty good singer, while the heavy metal bands Dynazty and Dead by April turn out to have the best songs in the entire contest - and this is *not* Monsters of Rock. Meanwhile, superstar Charlotte Perelli invests one million Swedish kronor in an extra video screen...and is voted out already in the second round. Other highlights include a bad pastiche of bad 80's pastiches, a song actually called "I wanna be Chris Isaak", a Kirk Douglas look-alike with a heavy "Tron" complex, and a Kate Bush rip. The Burat parody of Sean Banan was priceless. (A *parody* on Burat?!) The riddle of the year: is the metal band Dead by April crypto-Christian?
And you wonder why I and my dear mother are virtually plastered to our TV screens? (My mother, who is retired, actually loved Dynazty and Dead by April.)
So who won? No idea. Frankly, does anybody give a damn? Melodifestivalen is, and will forever remain, the ultimate entertainment show on Swedish television. And, believe it or not, it's actually public service! Something tells me they don't show stuff like this on the PBS...
The entire show is still available on the website of SVT/Melodifestivalen (until April 9), and I suppose a DVD is in the making, but if you want to experience the music for itself, this CD is a must.
Five stars!!!
Euphoria...going up, up, up...
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