Swedish singer Jenny Pettersson, who has been performing under the name Velvet for two years, has now taken off the velvet gloves: Norwegian girl group Velvet, one of the finalists in MGP 2009, had to change their name to avoid confusion with their collegue, who will appear in Swedish Melodifestivalen. The group will now be called Velvet inc.

Mads Rogde, manager of Velvet inc. told Norwegian newspaper VG: "We intented to call the group Velvet inc. from the beginning, but when the MGP plans were already made for 2009, we thought that the simple way would be the best and that Velvet was easier to be remembered by the audience. No one of us thought of Swedish Velvet at that time."

Jenny Pettersson's mangement cotacted the legal representatives of Norwegian group Velvet as they considered it too confusing to have two Nordic artists in the Eurovision Song Contest with the same name. However, if both actually won their respective national finals, it would not be the first time that two acts in the same contest appear under the same name, as both the Netherlands and Germany sent their own Michelle to Copenhagen in 2001. On the other hand, Scandinavian name changes are nothing new: in 1973, Swedish group Malta had to change their name to Nova to avoid confusion with the country (which did not even take part that year).

Velvet inc. will take part in the Norwegian national final this Saturday with their song Tricky. Velvet will take part in the third Swedish semi final this Saturday with song The Queen.

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Velvet (inc.) in the first Norwegian semi final:

Velvet in Melodifestivalen 2008: