Tonight, Sweden will continue Melodifestivalen 2009, its national selection for the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow. Eight acts will present one song each and two will be chosen to move forward to the national final, while another two will be chosen to enter the second chance round.

The show

The show to be broadcast on SVT 1, SVT HD and SVTWorldstarts at 20:00 CET and it will be hosted by Petra Mede at theEjendals Arena in Leksand. A build up to the show begins on Sverige Radio 4 starting at 19:30 CET. Eight acts will present one song each and there will be two round of televoting to decide the acts to move forward to the next round. In the first round the top four songs will be chosen (removing the bottom threebefore the voting closes)and they will be then compete in pairs. The song of each pair that gets more votes will go forward to the national final on 14th March, the second placed songs will enter the second chance round on 7th March.

Webcast

A webcast will be made available on SVT's official website here.

Sverige Radio 4 here.

Participants

Composer/lyricist in brackets.

  1. VelvetThe Queen (Tony Nilsson, Henrik Jansson)
  2. Rigo & the Topas Sound feat. Red FoxI got u (Tobias Karlsson/Rodrigo Pencheff)
  3. Molly SandénSå vill stjärnorna (Bobby Ljunggren, Marcos Ubeda/Ingela Forsman)
  4. E.M.D.Baby goodbye
  5. Mikael RickforsDu vinner över mig (Thomas G:son)
  6. Maja GullstrandHär för mig själv (Thomas G:son, Marcos Ubeda)
  7. SofiaAlla (Dimitri Stassos, Henrik Wilkström, Irini Michas, Nina Karolidou)
  8. BWOYou are not alone (Fredrik Kempe, Alexander Bard, Anders Hansson)

Your opinion

You can vote for your favourite in theshow here.

In 2008, Sweden was represented by Charlotte Perelli with the song Hero. The song finished 12th in the second semi final but still made it to the final as a jury wildcard. Eventually, it finished 18th with 47 points. It was the first time since 1987/1988 that Sweden finished outside the top ten two years in a row following the Ark's 18th place in 2007. In 2009, Sweden will take part in the first semi final on 12th May.