Now it's definately clear: The former lead singers of the group Friends, Kim Kärnfalk and Nina Inhammar, will not perform the song Give Me Your Love in one of the four Swedish semi finals of Melodifestivalen 2003. They will be replaced by two singers known from Fame Factory.
The rescue process initiated by the Swedish broadcaster SVT to avoid a disqualification of the song Give Me Your Love, which originally was meant to be performed by Kim and Nina, did indeed bear fruits. The sad news is that they refused to perform the song themselves. Nevertheless there's also a good news; the song will now be taken care of by two participants in the talent show Fame Factory, aired by a Swedish channel this autumn. Those are Magnus Bäcklund and Jessica Andersson. Magnus was the actual winner of the series.
The Swedish news paper Aftonbladet is today proudly announcing that they can “reveal” what esctoday.com could disclose already two days ago; that the group Barbados with the new lead vocalist Mathias Holmgren, even he known from Fame Factory, will perform the song Bye Bye, which is described as a “happy pop tune”, in the upcoming semi finals: “It feels very strange that we're going to compete with Magnus the former lead singer of Barbados . I just hope we will not meet eachother in the same semi final, that would not feel OK for any of us,” Mathias told the news paper and added “it's gonna be really cool. This is like realizing a child hood dream.” Unlike what was the case with Magnus as the lead singer, Mathias will not be the only vocalist of Bye Bye or any other future Barbados song. Even the bass player and the guitarist will sing some parts of the Melodifestivalen 2003 entry.
