This weekend the biggest spectacle of the Eurovision Song Contest national final season kicks off with the first heat of Melodifestivalen 2016.
Today, we got our first taste of what the songs from this weekends show will sound like. However, there’s one that has a familiar sound to it.
From the snippet released by the Swedish broadcaster SVT, Anna Book’s Himmel för två is an old-school schlager pop anthem that would’ve been commonplace in the competition a decade ago.
A couple of hours since it’s release, some Eurovision fans have picked up on the fact that this song sounds familiar. Comparisons have been made to a song that had previously competed in the Moldovan national selection in 2014.
The song, Taking care of a broken heart by Felicia Dunaf, was submitted to compete in the Moldovan national final but didn’t make the shortlist.
The Moldovan national final that year was won by Christina Scarlat who finished 16th in her semi-final with 13 points.
So what do you think? Do the songs sound too similar to each other?
UPDATE:
After a press conference earlier this evening, SVT has announced that Himmel för två has been disqualified from the competition after the broadcaster confirmed the song had previously been entered into the Moldovan national selection in 2014.
In the press conference, Melodifestivalen chief-executive Christer Björkman expressed his disappointment for the artist Anna, who will no longer perform in Saturday’s show, as well as explaining that because the song had been performed publicly in the past that it violated the rules of the competition.
