For the first time this year, there are five wildcards to Melodifestivalen along with the 27 songs that the juries have already selected. The first wildcard went to Darin, currently No.1 in Sweden with his cover of Coldplay's Viva La Vida, and releasing his debut UK single, Breathing Your Love, at the end of the month. Here's my look at the ten songs that have made it through to the final ten of the webjoker competition, which has now been cut down from the original longlist of over 150 songs!
Jessica Friberg - Break Free
This is very catchy, sounds incredibly amateurish and dated though, not too dissimilar to Ireland's 2009 ESC entry, Et Cetera by Sinead Mulvey. It certainly isn't bad but I don't think it would stand any chance of winning MF so it seems a bit of a pointless waste of a wildcard if it wins the webjoker competition.
Song Rating: 8/10
Chances of winning MF: Very small chance
Siberia - Hot For The Night
A mix of pop, 80's, and air guitar...like a cheaper sounding version of Star Pilots but with a female vocalist. Might appeal to the Alcazar fans if it had some much better production, the ending in particular is a bit of a damp squib compared to say, the triumphant last three seconds of Agnes' Love Love Love. Very catchy and repetitive but no chance of winning...
Song Rating: 7/10
Chances of winning MF: Very small chance
Johan Skoog - När Vi Har Landat
Now this is a bit different after the first two very generic by numbers songs. A sort of upbeat indie-dance-pop offering sung by a very bizarre acting man. The melody of this is really nice, his singing is a bit over the top though. It does feature a key change thank goodness, no MF song would be complete without it. It's a bit odd but it's my favourite so far.
Song Rating: 8.5/10
Chances of winning MF: Small chance
Genjor McNeil - My Kind Of Love
Oh dear...I expect this is a joke. Quite clearly a Melodifestivaloon judging by the video, he's probably ecstatic to have got this far but I sincerely hope it doesn't go any further. Very very cheap song, production, terrible vocals, he can barely sing. Against the big guns in the semi-finals this would come last for sure.
Song Rating: 1/10
Chances of winning MF: Non-existent
Ingela Hemming - Love For People
I'm quite impressed that music videos have been made for a lot of these seeing as even the likes of Caroline Af Ugglas, Alcazar and E.M.D. didn't ever get round to recording videos for their huge MF hits from this year. This song is a pop/light rock offering from an aging lady with a decent-ish voice. It's a bit weak to be honest. The main hook is ok but hardly the sort of thing that would redeem Sweden's poor form in the ESC, plus it sounds as if it stepped off a Corrs reject pile from 1997. It's not offensive, just plain.
Song Rating: 5/10
Chances of winning MF: Non-existent
Alrik Paulsson - Lite Sex Och Lite Spex
A middle aged man tries his best to make everyone laugh with the cheapest song I've heard this year with what I presume features hilarious lyrics about sex. Sounds like something you'd walk past an old boy singing on the street begging for money outside a station with his 80's one man band kit. Some Swedish authenticity to the sound, like a very bad Benny Andersson Band song...Terrible.
Song Rating: 1/10
Chances of winning MF: Could get a small novelty vote, but no chance
MiSt - Come And Get Me Now
Now we have what sounds like a mixed pop group with a very lively pop song, although like all of the others so far, it is incredibly cheap sounding, thank goodness it's mostly artists with lots of money and good producers behind them that make it to the MF semi-finals! The song itself is very uneventful after its quite promising start. Better than the last few songs but that's not hard.
Song Rating: 5/10
Chances of winning MF: Non-existent
Adam Sandahl Grupp - Kärleken Vänder Allt
An indie-pop song which is listed as Schlager/Dansband. Doesn't sound a lot like it to me, more like a Britpop type song, in Swedish obviously. It does have a key change though which leans it a bit more over towards Schlager. The hook is a lot more memorable than most of the other songs and with slightly better production, it could get as far as Second Chance, but it's doubtful. It's very happy and could appeal to quite a few people, nothing amazing though.
Song Rating: 6/10
Chances of winning MF: Very small chance
Halla Vilhjalmsdottir - How
With a name like that, it seems like an Icelandic chancer has made her way into the final ten! The slowest song here, but what surprises me is that there are no pure piano ballads here. It's very hard to make a singer and a piano sound cheap, and somebody could have easily gone down the Sarah Dawn Finer - I Remember Love route and produced an excellent simple ballad. This country tinged ballad is good, the hook is nice and I can see it being a huge grower too. Its relative simplicity could help it.
Song Rating: 8.5/10
Chances of winning MF: Small
Mark - I'll Make You Want Me
A very dodgy pop rock song to round off the selection. The singer has quite a deep voice, although not quite Chad Kroeger deep. Not good at all, there are no redeeming features to this, it sounds like something Brian McFadden might sing.
Song Rating: 2/10
Chances of winning MF: Non-existent
I wonder if the song that wins will get the opportunity/be forced to be given to a better producer as if there's one thing that all of these songs have in common, it's that they all sound incredibly cheap and the winner will sound absolutely awful along with the likes of Darin, Ola, Sibel and Andreas Johnson (if rumours are to be believed) who all have many great songs under their belts. Anyway, if you want to judge for yourself, the songs are up here and you can vote by text if you live in Sweden. None of these songs have any chance whatsoever of winning Melodifestivalen, in fact I'd be hugely surprised if the winner of this even makes it into the final. I'm not sure how much they play up to the sympathy vote on MF but I guess somebody with a back story of coming from nowhere might appeal to the Swedish voters, and of course the winning song will already have an advantage of being heard before all of the other songs, but one things for sure, if any of these ten had been in the 2009 final, it would have been completely shown up, because the production on nearly all of these is terrible and they could all do with a lick of paint before competing with the big guns. If I lived in Sweden, I would vote for either How, När Vi Har Landat or Break Free, but all three can be vastly improved.
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