The 18 year young, promising artist Sanna Nielsen (pictured) defeated what seemed to be invincible Alcazar with her exceptional voice, which lifted her average ballad several levels. As could be expected, the Fame Factory product Fame, consisting of Magnus Bäcklund and Jessica Andersson, received the highest amount of televotes and thereby a ticket to the national final of Melodifestivalen 2003.
The preselection of Göteborg was pre-hyped heavily, but didn't deliever any more than the first preselection of Jonköpking. One should rather say less. Without tunes you can't get off your mind, the pleasant surprise of the night was the voice of the young singer Sanna Nielsen, who sung the non-revolutionary ballad Hela värden för mig, one of only two entries with Swedish lyrics. She went all the way to the final, together with Fame, the duo composed by two of the participants from the commercial series called Fame Factory; Magnus Bäcklund, who won the series, and Jessica Andersson. They performed the Friends clone Give me your Love, the entry which originally was meant for Nina Inhammar and Kim Kärnfalk, the two former lead singers for Friends in the 2001 Eurovision Song Contest.
Fame; Magnus Bäcklund and Jessica Andersson
The two acts who will get a second chance through the fifth preselection, The Viewers' Choice, turned out to be Alcazar with Not a Sinner, nor a Saint and Brandsta City Släckers, who suddenly lost the sound during their performance. The firemen perform the second song in Swedish, 15 minuter, with sarcastic lyrics about reality series like Survivor and Big Brother. Amazing 632,000 televiewers voted for one of the preselection's eight entries tonight – more than 200,000 more than the record breaking amount last week.
Through a flying start where she hovered above the audience of Skandinavium, the venue where the preselection took place, Carola, the hostess of the evening, performed a medley of her three Melodifestivalen entries, Främling (1983), Mitt i ett äventyr, which was the runner up in 1990, and Fångad av en stormvind (1991).
Only 16 year old Estonian singer Kerli delievered what may be considered the most modern song of the evening, Let's go, with major parts of the lyrics in Spanish, and somewhat similar to Starting over in this year's Maltese national final. Uruguayan born Andrés Esteche, even he originated from Fame Factory, knew how to dance, noone can deny that. Anyway, still not enough to proceed. The four defeated entries were placed like this…
5th: Andrés Esteches – Just like a Boomerang
6th: Kerli & Locatellies – Let`s go
7th: Pandora – You
8th: Aleena – Better believe it
