Fireballs, confetti, long fabrics and a big glass box – this is a partial list of what is waiting for us on Saturday’s show. Melodifestivalen 2014, the competition that will choose the Swedish entry for the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest, will kick off today at the Malmö Arena. You can now listen to the 2:30 minutes studio version of tonight’s entries.
You can listen to the 2:30 studio minutes version of the 8 competing entries at the 2014 Melodifestivalen Semi-final 1 here.
Eight artists will fight for only two places in the grand final and additional two artists will get a second chance. The big names of this round are YOHIO, who came second in last year’s final with Heartbreak hotel, and Helena Paparizou (in the main picture), who won the Eurovision in 2005 for Greece with her song My number one.
“We thought a lot about what we should do differently in order to stand out. We wanted to do something extra. It took some time before we came up with the idea of throwing the fireballs”, tells YOHIO to the Swedish news agency TT.
YOHIO playing with fire during today’s rehearsals. (Pictures by Olle Kirchmeier/SVT)
Few days back, the participating artists had their first rehearsals. One minute long snippets were supposed to be published earlier , however SVT faced some technical difficulties and the clips will be online later tonight on SVT Play here (click on the ‘Klipp’ tab). Further rehearsals were held yesterday and the last rehearsal is taking place this afternoon.
Meanwhile, you can also read the full lyrics of each song on the artists’ “Song bibles” here. (Links under ‘Relaterat’)
The swedish newspaper Aftonbladet has recently launched a special project called Schlager resan (The schlager tour). Every week, they will drive from the newspaper’s headquarters in central Stockholm to the place where each semi-final will be held. On their way, they will be interviewing the participating artists and the whole roadtrip is broadcasted live over the internet. Check it out on Aftonbladet’s Melodifestivalen portal here (in Swedish).
The final of this year’s Melodifestivalen will take place on March 8 in Stockholm. The winner will go to represent Sweden in the neighboring country Denmark on May 6, in the 1st semi-final of Eurovision 2014.
