This is a blog written after the first screening of Måns Zelmerlöw’s Heroes, which went on to win the Swedish nomination and the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest.
The world’s most-watched cultural event is some time away, but for Eurovision affectionados the entertainment has started already. Britain and Sweden are the continent’s two greatest exporters of pop music, but the UK Eurovision contestant is annointed by the BBC whose institutional snobbishness and soft xenophobia prevents it from understanding the contest. Sweden asks Swedes to choose from one of 28 entries in a six-stage event called Melody Festival, now in full flow.
For MelFest, a song starts with songwriters. They’re celebrated, and shown on camera before the performer gets going. A song that wins Eurovision is unlike any other piece of music. It needs to cross several linguistic and cultural boundaries; to write something that will resonate as well as Reykjavik as it does in Ramallah takes some doing. It’s complex political and cultural balancing act. Sweden now convenes overseas juries to help decide its Eurovision entry (see below).
Eurovision is a television event, so it’s not just the song but the performance which makes a winner.
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