A review of the 2010 Swedish Melody Festival CD.
Melodifestivalen (The Melody Festival) is a popular music contest in
Sweden, organized almost annually since time immemorial - or at least 1959.
Most Swedes virtually grew up with the contest, which had its ups and downs.
Around 2002, the festival was substantially reformed and has been the most popular show on Swedish television ever since - much to the chagrin of some right-wing politicians, who resent the fact that the popular competition is shown at a public service channel. Nor can they privatize it, since the point of the Melody Festival is to choose the Swedish representative to the Eurovision Song Contest, organized by the EBU. And the EBU is, of course, a union of public service TV networks.
It seems Melodifestivalen is unstoppable! And crypto-socialist?
Everyone around here loves to comment the show: the songs, the bad fashion wear of the participating performers, and the embarrassing intermission acts. It's virtually a national pastime during a couple of weeks in February and March every year to argue over the Melody Festival. The tabloids have a field day, too, as you might well imagine. So far, two foreign embassies (the Polish and the Russian) have actually filed official protests against some of the performances. How we all laughed at *that* development! We're still waiting for Albania, Moldova and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to follow suit. Not to mention Micronesia, but I suppose they don't have an embassy in Stockholm?
2010 was a relatively good year, both in terms of intermission acts (featuring Dolph Lundgren - no kidding) and in terms of the actual music, found on this double-CD compilation. It's far removed from U.S. chart music, to be sure, but many of the songs are sufficiently tolerable for me to give this album four stars out of five. Ironically, the winning song, "This is my life" featuring Anna Bergendahl, is actually one of the worst.
But yes, if Madonna, Michael Jackson or Lady Gaga is your cup of tea, you might be somewhat disappointed (or amazed) by the compositions included on "Melodifestivalen 2010"...
Don't tell me I didn't warn you.
Around 2002, the festival was substantially reformed and has been the most popular show on Swedish television ever since - much to the chagrin of some right-wing politicians, who resent the fact that the popular competition is shown at a public service channel. Nor can they privatize it, since the point of the Melody Festival is to choose the Swedish representative to the Eurovision Song Contest, organized by the EBU. And the EBU is, of course, a union of public service TV networks.
It seems Melodifestivalen is unstoppable! And crypto-socialist?
Everyone around here loves to comment the show: the songs, the bad fashion wear of the participating performers, and the embarrassing intermission acts. It's virtually a national pastime during a couple of weeks in February and March every year to argue over the Melody Festival. The tabloids have a field day, too, as you might well imagine. So far, two foreign embassies (the Polish and the Russian) have actually filed official protests against some of the performances. How we all laughed at *that* development! We're still waiting for Albania, Moldova and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to follow suit. Not to mention Micronesia, but I suppose they don't have an embassy in Stockholm?
2010 was a relatively good year, both in terms of intermission acts (featuring Dolph Lundgren - no kidding) and in terms of the actual music, found on this double-CD compilation. It's far removed from U.S. chart music, to be sure, but many of the songs are sufficiently tolerable for me to give this album four stars out of five. Ironically, the winning song, "This is my life" featuring Anna Bergendahl, is actually one of the worst.
But yes, if Madonna, Michael Jackson or Lady Gaga is your cup of tea, you might be somewhat disappointed (or amazed) by the compositions included on "Melodifestivalen 2010"...
Don't tell me I didn't warn you.
No comments:
Post a Comment