We are already in week 4 of the preliminary heats of Melodifestivalen, and this week the contestants are in Malmö, last year’s Eurovision host city. As you should know by now, the audience will vote to pick two entries going straight to the Grand Final of Sweden’s national Eurovision qualifications, plus one more for a second chance.
Beside the competition component, be sure to look out for our big favorite Ace Wilder making her comeback to the Mello stage in the opening number.
The Thursday rehearsals are done and the songs are out on Spotify’s New Music Friday, so let’s take a look at the participants of week 4 at Malmö Arena.
1) Andreas Lundstedt – Vicious
The most disco of all Disco Boys, Andreas Lundstedt is back in Melodifestivalen once more. This is his 10th time in total, he has previously competed four times solo and five times with his legendary disco group Alcazar. The song is naturally fun disco pop that is right up his alley, but it is kind of missing a punch. The staging looks great with six dancers joining in about half-way through and everybody looking so effortlessly cool.
2) Ella Tiritiello – Bara du är där
Ella Tiritiello burst out to the music scene at 14 years of age in 2021, singing a wonderful rendition of For a Better Day with the Royal Philharmonic to celebrate the renaming on Globen to Avicii Arena. She has since also made her acting debut in the movie Sommartider playing Marie Fredriksson. She is now making her Melfest debut with a beautiful ballad in Swedish, which sounds pretty much like a lot of Swedish female-fronted pop on Spotify right now. The softer and slower parts of the song feel like they are pulling down the energy way too low, but she’s showing her capacity in the belting parts. Also the bed as a prop is making the staging rather static. So this is not it, but Ella sure has potential for the future.
3) Tennessee Tears – Yours
The country duo Tennessee Tears consists of Tilda Feuk and Jonas Hermansson, hailing from Småland but spending plenty of time in Nashville making music. They made their Melodifestivalen debut in 2023, which was their breakthroughm coinciding with the growing popularity of the genre in Sweden. The song is a happy stomper with catchy hooks, and the staging brings a full band and a backup singer to the stage with the duo. It looks and sounds great.
4) KAJ – Bara bada bastu
It’s been a while since Melodifestivalen did humour well, while the fun-filled entries have done great at Eurovision in recent years. So it’s about time SVT brings in comic relief enforcements from Finland, the humour group KAJ representing the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland and hailing from Ostrobothnia. They are well-known for using their very local dialect, which has been dampened just a little bit for this Melfest entry. The catchy tune has them singing the praises of the sauna and doing Tik-Tok worthy choreo with the house dancers (who end up in the sauna wearing only towels and waving their birch whisks around). There’s a lot going on with the staging, and the guys in KAJ never miss a beat. So let’s go – yksi, kaksi, kolme, SAUNA!
5) AmenA – Do Good Be Better
Amena Alsameai came to Sweden as a refugee from Yemen five years ago, and had her musical breakthrough in Idol 2021 soon after. She released her debut album last year and is now ready for her Melodifestivalen debut with a song about kindness and hope. Her staging is relying on hanging rope lights beisde the LEDs and the stage lighting, simple but rather nice-looking. The live vocals may sound a bit shaky, but AmenA really is bringing in light with her own presence as well.
6) Måns Zelmerlöw – Revolution
And then we have the one so many people have been waiting for, Måns Zelmerlöw making a return to Melodifestivalen 10 years after his Eurovision win with Heroes. Eurovision fans have been either hyped or upset about Sweden sending another previous winner to ESC, attempting to make a Loreen double — way before anybody had heard any of the songs from Sweden or from other countries for that matter. Well, he hasn’t won the Melodifestivalen yet, and if he actually does, he won’t be a surefire winner at ESC. But the song is good, not gonna say otherwise. It does recycle some elements of Heroes and Avicii circa 2015, so it’s not exactly revolutionising, but the production is excellent and Måns can take his audience through the cameras. The staging is Eurovision final worthy in a way that not many Melfest entries are this year. The jumbo-sized confetti looks amazing but can be a bit unpredictable though. One of those things ended up in Måns’s mouth in the rehearsals, which resulted in him laughing and losing composure for a bit.
All photos © Nina Uddin
