Over the last few weeks, the voting for the 2009 esctoday.com national final awards took place. Thousands of votes were cast and now it is time to reveal the winners. Today, the recipents of the awards for Best female performance and Best ballad are revealed.

The 2009 esctoday.com National Final Award for BEST FEMALE PERFORMANCE goes to…

• …Sarah Dawn Finer for her performance of the song Moving on in the Swedish national final

Sarah Dawn Finer was known as an actress when she was younger but she became famous as a singer when she entered the Swedish selection for the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest. With I remember love, she qualified through the second chance round and finished fourth in the final. The song was a number four hit in the single charts and her first album, which would be released the same year, even made it to number two. In 2009, she entered Melodifestivalen again. Again, she qualified through the second chance and she finished sixth this time in the final. The single chartet at number three in Sweden and the album even reached the top.

Live performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g488a_GNRc

This is the second time this award goes to Sweden. Previous winners were Sasa Lendero (from Slovenia) in 2006, Mirela (from Spain) in 2007 and Sanna Nielssen (from Sweden) in 2008. This year, the complete results were as follows:

1. Sweden – 39.8%
2. Mirela (Spain) – 21.0%
3. Hera Björk (Denmark) – 18.2%
4. Tone Damli Aaberge (Norway) – 11.3%
5. Ana Bebic (Croatia) – 9.7%

The 2009 esctoday.com National Final Award for BEST BALLAD goes to…

• …Nada es comparable a ti from the Spanish national final written by Tony Sanchez Ohlsson, Thomas G:son & Andreas Rickstrand

Nada es comparable a ti was written by the team behind the 2007 Spanish entry I love you mi vida. Performed by Mirela, runner-up in the 2007 Spanish national final, the song finished fourth in the national final- It had previously finished second in the third semi final.

The song (studio version):

This award is given out for the first time. Spain won the award narrowly ahead of the Swedish jazz ballad Snälla, snälla. The complete results were as follows:

1. Spain – 31.9%
2. Snälla, snälla (Sweden) – 31.6%
3. I wish I could pretend (Ireland) – 15.6%
4. Will you dance with me (Israel) – 12.2%
5. Ajër (Albania) – 8.9%