Melodifestivalen - Dates & Speculations

As I was explaining earlier on, I will devote some of this blog's posts to the wonderful and exciting Swedish music festival Melodifestivalen. During six live shows the Swedish participant for the Eurovision Song Contest is chosen. First four shows will be the 4 semi-finals, followed by the Andra Chansen round (second chance show) which ultimately will lead to the final show where 11 participants will compete.

Recently the dates & locations for the live shows were announced through the official Melodifestivalen website:

February 7th, Göteborg / Scandinavium 1st Semi-final

February 14th, Nagpur / Skellefteå Kraft Arena 2nd Semi-final

February 21st, Leksand / Ejendals Arena 3rd Semi-final

February 28th, Malmö / Malmö Arena 4th Semi-final

March 7th, Norrköping / Himmelstalundshallen Andra chansen

March 14th, Stockholm / Globen Final

What is more exciting is that the writers & song titles that will compete in the contest already have been announced (with the exception of 4 wild cards). Though the names of performers have not yet been made public, there can be made some speculations on the following tracks:

Stay the night M&L: Anders Hansson, Mårten Sanden, Andreas Lundsted, Lina Hedlund, Therese Merkel

Interesting about the above track is Andreas Lundstedt, Lina Hedlund and Therese Merkel; all members of Alcazar who participated in MF twice (2003 & 2005), but Andreas also solo in 2007 with the track Move (he did not qualify for the final that year). Most likely this will be the new Alcazar track before their upcoming 3rd studio album.

It's my life M&L: Alexander Bard, Bobby Ljungren, Oscar Holter

This could be a new BWO song who then will be trying for the 4th time (sounds a bit desperate to me..?) to win the festival. Of their three participations the last two were most succesful (2006's Temple Of Love reaching no.2 in final just behind Carola's Invincible, however it reached no.1 in the Swedish single charts and made their album Halcyon Nights quite a succes. 2008's Lay Your Love On Me did not have the quality of Temple Of Love after a first listen to me, though it reached no.3 in the final show. If BWO is to participate again, it is most likely with this song as Alexander Bard is band member and Oscar Holter a frequent remixer of their latest tracks.

Moving on M&L: Sarah Dawn Finer, Fredrik Kempe

Sarah Dawn Finer participated in the Melodifestivalen before, in 2007 to be exact, with a beautiful ballad called I Remember Love reaching the 4th overall position. Afterwards she released her album A Finer Dawn which I believe has some good tracks. This track Moving On however might be the return of Sarah Dawn Finer?

Hope and glory M&L: Fredrik Kempe, Måns Zelmerlöw, M: Henrik Wikström

From one 2007's edition participant to another; Mans Zelmerlöw. He reached the 3rd place with Cara Mia, which was also composed by Fredrik Kempe. Mans is a 2005 Swedish Idol contestant who appeared in the Swedish adaptions of the musicals Grease & Footlose. After competing in MF 2007 he released his debut album Stand By For.. which included singles as Cara Mia and Work Of Art. This contribution (Hope and glory) might be the forthcoming single for a new album and perhaps Swedish 2009's Eurovision participant. Let's "Hope"!

You are not alone M&L: Fredrik Kempe, Alexander Bard, Anders Hansson

As I was speaking about BWO earlier on, this could be a possible track for them as well as it is written by band member Alexander as well, but also by Anders Hansson who wrote more songs together with the band on their previous records. Though I have to say I'd give It's My Life a bigger chance. It will be interesting to see how it turns out when the performers are announced, they might not even perform at MF 2009 at all...

Du vinner över mig M&L: Thomas G:son

Translation; You Win Me Over. As Thomas G:son composed this song all by himself, I wouldn't be surprised if this will be a true Swedish pop track in the likes of Carola's Invincible (2006) and Ven A Bailar Conmigo (Guri Shanke - Norway ESC 2007).

1000 miles M&L: Jarl Niklas , David Stenmarck
This track is written by David Stenmarck, the younger brother of Martin Stenmarck whom we all know from 2005's Las Vegas. This could possible be a next single for Martin? After 2005's poor ESC result with Las Vegas Martin released 2 huge succesful Swedish albums including the no.1 hit (for 10 weeks!) 7milakliv. His latest release is an English track in collaboration with Scandic Hotels. So it wouldn't be surprising if he's trying his luck with an English language album soon?

Studying, working & blogging don't go well together..

Yes finally! This evening I had my last (of in total 2) exam of this first semester for my new study at University. The first one (Strategic Management) last Friday I totally fucked up. Although I did prepare quite well for the test, the implementation of the theory on cases was really difficult so I am quite sure I did not pass it. Luckily tonight things went a lot better on my exam for Informationmanagement. I did prepare a lot for it and the questions weren't too difficult. Anyway now it is time to do some relaxing instead of stressing out though I'm already starting with work from tomorrow onwards.

On the blog front I've just decided to merge the two blogs (this & Melodifestivalen 2009) I just started before the weekend into a single one. As I'm pretty sure I do not have enough time (due to college, exams & work) and I probably do not care enough to keep both up to date. So I thought why not put them together as I know I'm gonna be al thrilled about Melodifestivalen when more information about performers on the festival becomes public and especially when the live shows take place in February and March next year. It will be impossible for me not the dedicate a lot of posts on the event. So instead of going into every detail of Melodifestivalen (as I originally planned for the Melodifestivalen 2009 blog) I will try and combine some (for me atleast) interesting facts in a few posts over the coming weeks/months.

First post on Blog Baszjuh

So here it is; my first post on this blog. Today I finished the artwork for the header and I am quite satisfied with it. The font for the text part was the hardest. I think I've used over 50 fonts to try out what soothed the picture best. Though it was nothing compared to the lay out for the blog. I totally messed up the HTML codifications so I could get ride of the text header and make it into a picture header instead of the length I wanted. It all resulted in what you are seeing now. Stil have to figure out how to get the sidebar "links" on the page as for some reason I can not get this to work. Will have to look into this further later on as tonight I was mainly busy with starting up another blog called Melodifestivalen, a nation wide music festival in Sweden which usually provides some great tracks: http://melodifestivalen2009.blogspot.com/ It will be challenging for me to keep both blogs updated as I already started up a blog some months ago resulting in only 8 posts or so...