Time to present you the next two finalists for this years Melodifestivalen 2012. The Swedish selection process for Eurovision is coming to an end with 10 acts who will try to impress the Swedish televoters and international juries. The winner of the combined results will represent Sweden at this years Eurovision Song Contest, held in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Yesterday we presented the first three participants, today we are having a closer look at Lisa Miskovsky and Topcats.
Lisa Miskovsky – Why Start A Fire
Lisa Miskovsky, is a Swedish pop/pop rock singer songwriter who rose to fame in Sweden in 2001 and has been very succesfull since. It’s her very first appearance in Melodifestivalen with the song ‘Why Start A Fire’ written by Aleksander With, Bernt Rune Stray, Berent Philip Moe & herself. She was one of the big surprises this year to make it immediately to the grand final, along Danny Saucedo. ‘Why Start A Fire’ is anything but a usual Eurovision song, in fact it breaks all the tradition of a Eurovision ballad. And that’s probably it’s strength too, it’s unusual, very charming and reminds in many ways to something which could have been featured on a Sinead O’Connor album.
Our Verdict: ”Why Start A Fire” could well be the big underdog on Saturday evening. She has a fantastic song first of all and is very lucky to perform between two numbers who are a lot more uptempo, which will make it stand out even more. As one of the two ballads in the final, and a very contemporary one, we think this could actually well become the international juries favourite. Having said that, is Europe ready for a Bergendahl-gate number 2. Being innovative and unusual has not really paid off for Sweden, and while we think ‘Why Start a Fire’ is absolutely charming and his a great stage performance, we can not help but think this might be a bit too difficult for Europe, who might forget to pick up the phone in May.
Top Cats – Baby Doll
Performing 5th in the final, is the second act qualifying from the Andra Chansen round, last week. The TopCats beat Dynazty and Timoteij in order to earn their right to the final with a very feel good rockabiliy song, called ‘Baby Doll’, written by Mårten Eriksson, Lina Eriksson, Susie Päivärinta. It’s 3 minutes of pure fun, it’s a song which stays true to its genre, the group itself seem to be having lots of fun and perform the song very well. Was it a surprise to see them qualify? Maybe a little but we took it into account as Top Cats stayed true to themselves, and with 50ies/60ies being popular again, it’s no wonder they did qualify. It would be interesting to see how this would work on Eurovision, just for the fact that there are too many people on stage now.
Verdict: Despite the praise of sticking to the genre and coming up with a great rockabiliy song, we don’t really expect TopCats to dominate the scoreboard. Rockabily has been done before, along country and western, on the Eurovision stage and hasn’t really set it on fire. Belgium e.g. had a similar act in 2009 and didn’t qualify. Sweden probably has forgotten all about it, but a chance of a similar result with a similar track is not avoidable.
Stay tuned for our 3rd part of ‘Welcome To Globen’
