The Melodifestivalen 2015 songs that will be fighting for the ticket to Vienna in the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest 2015 are in place. At the time of going to press svt.se/melodifestivalen had received 2,177 contributions in total.

Entries are down this year however the Melodifestivalen executive producer has stated that quality over quantity is the goal for the 2015 edition of the Swedish finals.

The songwriters listened to the producers when they asked them to cull hard and only submit the best of their work. The interest to participate in the national competition is higher in Sweden than in any other Eurovision country. Normally, no other country receives over 1000 contributions to their national finals. Ahead of the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest 2177 compositions were submitted, of which 1733 were direct to SVT and 444 for the public competition.

Melodifestivalen has been modernised and in recent years moved away from the traditional popular schlager music that dominated the contest in previous years.  Christer Björkman wants the songwriters to breathe new life into the genre and get back to a high level of the old tradition. Pop music has been in short supply and they are searching high and low for catchy songs that people can identify with and sing along to.

The executive producer of Melodifestivalen has cited Ace Wilder’s Busy Doin ‘Nothin as setting a trend evident that is evident in the selection of music that had been submitted this year.The selection panel will sit down shortly and choose their contributions to match them with their selected roster of artists.

Kalle Johansson is the first known Melodifestivalen 2015 contestant as he won Svensktoppen Nasta which guarantees a place in the Melodifestivalen heats. Kalle will now be partnered with a new song once the SVT panel makes its final deliberations. Johansson won Svensktoppen with the song Den dar dan a few weeks ago.

The names of the songs, songwriters and artists competing in Melodifestivalen 2015 will be announced in the autumn.

As the Melodifestivalen 2015 season begins esctoday.com will be keeping you updated with all the latest factual news and developments from Europe’s premier national final contest.

Stay tuned to esctoday.com for more news on Sweden, Melodifestivalen and of course the Eurovision Song Contest.