Melodifestivalen
Melodifestivalen is an annual song competition organised by Swedish public broadcasters Sveriges Television and Sveriges Radio. It determines the country's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest, and has been staged almost every year since 1959. Unlike other competitions such as Italy's Sanremo, the selection of the country's Eurovision entry is the primary focus of Melfest. In the early 2000s, the competition was the most popular television program in Sweden; it is also broadcast on radio and the Internet. In 2012, the heats averaged 3.3 million viewers, and over an estimated four million people in Sweden watched the final, almost half of the Swedish population.
The festival has produced seven Eurovision winners and 26 top-five placings for. The winner of Melodifestivalen has been chosen by panels of jurors since its inception. Since 1999, the juries have been joined by a public telephone vote which has an equal influence over the outcome. The competition makes a considerable impact on the music charts in Sweden.
The introduction of heats in 2002 raised the potential number of contestants from around twelve to thirty-two. A children's version of the competition, Lilla Melodifestivalen, also began that year. Light orchestrated pop songs, known locally as schlager music, used to be so prevalent that the festival was sometimes referred to as schlagerfestivalen or schlager-sm by the Swedish media. However, other styles of music, such as rap, reggae, and glam rock, have made an appearance since the event's expansion. The introduction of a final in Stockholm has attracted substantial tourism to the city.
Origins
With seven nations competing, the first Eurovision Song Contest took place in Lugano, Switzerland in May 1956. Sweden's first contest was the third edition of the song competition, in 1958. Without broadcasting a public selection, Sveriges Radio chose to send Alice Babs to the contest in Hilversum, Netherlands. The song selected was "Samma stjärna lyser för oss två", later renamed "Lilla stjärna". It finished fourth at Eurovision on 12 March 1958.The first Melodifestivalen, incorporated into the Säg det med musik radio series, took place on 29 January 1959 at Cirkus in Stockholm; eight songs participated. Four "expert" juries in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, and Luleå decided the winner. The competition was won by Siw Malmkvist performing "Augustin", but SR decided that the winning song—regardless of its original performer—would be performed by Brita Borg at Eurovision. This policy of selecting the artist for Eurovision internally and having other artists perform potential Swedish entries at Melodifestivalen was stopped in 1961. The competition became a standalone television programme in 1960, known as the Eurovisionschlagern, svensk final. In the event's early years, it was also broadcast in Norway and Denmark via the Nordvision network. The competition adopted its current name, Melodifestivalen, in 1967.
Melodifestivalen has failed to be staged on three occasions. In 1964, the competition was cancelled due to an artist's strike; Sweden did not send a song to Eurovision that year. Sweden was absent at Eurovision for a second time in 1970 because of a Nordic boycott of the voting system, which had led to a four-way tie for first place at the 1969 contest. After SR staged the 1975 contest in Stockholm, left-wing groups argued that Sweden should not spend money to win and host Eurovision again. This led to mass demonstrations against commercial music and the organisation of an anti-commercial Alternativfestivalen. Therefore, Sweden decided not to send a song to Eurovision 1976 but returned in 1977.
Participation
Hundreds of songs and performers have entered Melodifestivalen since its debut. Although songwriters living outside Sweden were once not allowed to enter Melodifestivalen, the 2012 contest marked the first time foreign songwriters could submit entries, provided that they collaborated with a Swedish songwriter. To be eligible, songwriters and performers must be at least sixteen years of age on the day of the first Eurovision semi-final.Until 2001, participation in the festival was limited to a single night. The number of contestants ranged from five to twelve. A two-round system was used intermittently between 1981 and 1998, in which all but five of the contestants were eliminated in the first round of voting. Failure to reach the second round under this system was seen as a major failure for a prominent artist; when Elisabeth Andreassen failed to qualify in 1984, it almost ended her music career. The introduction of weekly heats in 2002 increased the number of contestants to thirty-two. At least ten of the contestants must perform in Swedish. A CD of each year's competing songs has been released since 2001, and a DVD of the heats and final since 2003. Due to the proliferation of digital download and streaming into the 2010s, DVDs have not been issued for Melodifestivalen in recent years.
Melodifestivalen has been the launch-pad for the success of popular local acts, such as ABBA, Tommy Körberg, and Lisa Nilsson. The competition has played host to performers from outside Sweden, including Baccara, Alannah Myles, Katrina Leskanich, Cornelis Vreeswijk, and Margaret. Melodifestivalen participants have also represented—and unsuccessfully tried to represent—other countries at Eurovision. While local success for Melodifestivalen winners is common, most contestants return to obscurity and few have major international success. The impact that the competition makes on the Swedish charts means an artist need not win the competition to earn significant domestic record sales. For example, the song which finished last at Melodifestivalen 1990, "Symfonin" by Loa Falkman, topped Sverigetopplistan, the Swedish singles chart. The most recent occurrence was 2024 with Fröken Snusk's song "Unga & fria". In 2007, twenty-one participants reached the Sverigetopplistan. The week after the 2008 final, songs from the festival made up the entire top fifteen on the domestic singles chart.
Selection of contestants
The process of narrowing thousands of potential entries down to the competing songs lasts over seven months. SVT directly selects half of the entries from amongst public submissions, while the other half comes from special invitations made by SVT or other entries that SVT has selected from amongst the submissions. Between 2012 and 2021, the final entry was selected via the P4 Nästa competition organised by Sveriges Radio P4. At least 10% of the competing songs are sung in Swedish. The entire process can begin as early as May of the previous year and is completed by January.Songs
SVT begins looking for songs nine months before the start of the televised Melodifestivalen. The deadline for submission is in September and songs can be in any language. In the pre-selection, song length is limited to three minutes and twenty seconds; songs must be shortened to three minutes if they reach the final twenty-eight and qualifying songs may also be remixed.The submission process is overseen by members of the Swedish Music Publishers Association, whose task is to reduce the number of songs, which have numbered over 3,000 a year since 2002, to around 1,200. The 3,440 entries received in the preselection for Melodifestivalen 2009 was the most in the competition's history. The figure has since lowered to around 2,500 submissions every year. The SMFF's choices are then given to a sixteen-person jury of music professionals, SVT staff and other members of the public. The jury ranges from teenagers to people in their fifties. The songs that qualify, along with their composers and lyricists, are announced at the end of September. This is often followed by fervent speculation over who will perform the songs. Songwriters that qualify must provide interviews to SVT, attend a press conference before the competition, and remain open to promotional appearances if their song reaches the final.
Artists and wildcards
SVT selects performers for the entries. Artists who perform the demo of a song automatically enter the competition; they must perform their songs if suitable alternate performers cannot be found. The artists' songs risk disqualification if they refuse. In the past, this rule led to the disqualification of, among others, Carola's "När löven faller" in 2003 and Stephen Simmonds' "So Good" in 2006. SVT may also give songs to other performers without considering the interests of the demo artist. This prevented the Brandsta City Släckers and Pernilla Wahlgren from performing the songs they had submitted. Replacements for disqualified songs fare unpredictably at the competition. In 2006, "Naughty Boy" by Hannah Graaf finished second to last in its heat. In 2002 and 2007, by contrast, the replacements performed by Jan Johansen and Måns Zelmerlöw reached the final ten. The contestants that will perform the twenty-eight qualifiers from the preselection are announced in late November. Singer-songwriters are common. As such, artists often confirm that they will participate before the official announcement.The wildcard system was introduced in 2004 to diversify the music featured. Four artists, one in each heat, were invited by SVT to enter a song of their choice into the competition, provided it does not breach the rules. The wildcard songs and artists were announced in January. Since the wildcards' introduction, three have won the competition. The wildcard system was discontinued in 2013.
Hosting
The venues for each year's Melodifestivalen are announced in September of the preceding year. The heats are held in towns and cities throughout Sweden. The 16,300-capacity Globe Arena in Stockholm hosted the final since the heats were introduced in 2002, through to 2012. In 2013, the final was moved to the newly built Friends Arena in Solna Municipality, Stockholm County. The Scandinavium in Gothenburg was offered to host the 2005 final, but ultimately declined due to a scheduling conflict with a Frölunda HC ice hockey match.The event spent its early years at one venue: Cirkus in Stockholm, which hosted the first ten competitions. It has hosted the Melodifestivalen final 17 times in total. The Avicii Arena has hosted seven finals, and SVT's Stockholm headquarters has staged five. The competition first took place outside Stockholm in 1975 as part of a decentralisation policy at SR. Stockholm has hosted 37 finals in total, including the first 14. Gothenburg has hosted eight, and Malmö seven. The competition's final has never been held outside these cities. Before the 2002 expansion, the host of the previous year's Melodifestivalen would host the Eurovision Song Contest in the event of a Swedish victory. As such, Eurovision 1985, Eurovision 1992 and Eurovision 2000 were held in Gothenburg, Malmö and Stockholm, respectively. Since 2002, the only venues that have hosted more than three heats are Gothenburg's Scandinavium, which has hosted one every year since 2003, and Malmö's Malmö Arena. In 2008, the Second Chance round was held in Kiruna, which lies north of the Arctic Circle. Since 2013, the final has been held at the Friends Arena. In 2021, all shows of that year's Melodifestivalen took place in the Annexet in Stockholm, and without an audience present, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic continued to affect the organisation of Melodifestivalen in 2022, with the first three heats of that year's competition all held at the Avicii Arena, and the remaining shows at the Friends Arena.