Last night the city of Gävle welcomed all Melodifestivalen delegates and press by throwing a royal party at the city hall and managed to put itself on the Swedish Melodifestivalen map after with their fantastic arrangements. Today the rehearsals continued in the Läkerol Arena in Gävle.

The theme for Melodifestivalen in Gävle is A Royal Welcome and there is not a chance that anyone in the area can miss that Melodifestivalen is in town! The whole downtown area is decorated with Melodifestivalen flags anda lot of activities like talent shows and artist performances take place during the Melodifestivalen week in Gävle.

Last night the welcome party was held at the city hall with artists, press and local celebrates invited. The menu of the evening contained royal dishes and wine from different centuries. Most appreciated during the evening was the dessert buffet with an endless range of cookies, cakes, chocolate and other delicacies. The hosts were dressed up as kings and queens and all dinner tables were beautifully decorated with flowers and candles.

Today the rehearsals continued in the Läkerol Arena in Gävle. Even though the artists seemed to haveenjoyed themselves at the Welcome party, there were no signs of fatigue among them during the performances.

1. Magnus Uggla För kung och fosterland – A typical up tempo song with rather humorous lyrics that pretty much sound like most of Uggla’s work. Magnus and the backing singers wore military outfits that fit perfectly with the song. Today’s rehearsal was much stronger than the one yesterday.

2. Emilè Azar Vi hade nåt – Emilè has a nice voice but he still looks a bit uncertain on stage. The song has a boy band touch to it and the chorus of the song is a bit similar to Westlife’s World of our own. The background on stage was improved today. Instead of yellow smileys there are now red hearts and beautiful blue colours on the screens.

3. Sanna Nielsen Vågar du, vågar jag – Sanna made a very good impression on stage today in her silver/grey/black outfit. She sings very confident and made no mistakes while performing her typical up Swedish up tempo popschlager.

4. Caroline af Ugglas Tror på dig – Yesterday Caroline didn’t sing much due to a cold. Today her voice seemed to be in a better shape. Her song is a bit inspired by flower power with a nice brass tune. There will be a lot of white and yellow on stage! Caroline missed a lot of camera angles during today’s rehearsals.

5. After Dark (Åh) När ni tar saken i egna händer – Christer Lindarw, the singer, had some difficulties remembering the lyrics in the beginning of the rehearsals, but when SVT taped the last try it all seemed perfect. The outfits are very glittery and there is a lot of humour in the performance. Famous TV-personalities, that sing-a-long, are displayed on TV-screens on stage. The chorus is strong and won’t let any schlager fan down.

6. Sarah Dawn Finer I Remember Love – Sarah has a beautiful voice and made no mistakes during the rehearsals today. She will be performing her ballad wearing a black outfit. Her song grows on you and might very well do well on Saturday.

7. Verona La musica – Verona wears a short, yellow dress on stage. La musica is a nice techno pop song totally in Italian. Verona looked a little strict on stage today but sang well.

8. Andreas Johnson A Little Bit of Love – Andreas performs a 60’s song with a very catchy chorus. He starts out by standing on a small platform in the audience and walks up on stage before the second chorus. It’s a nice number with lots of colours on stage. However, today’s rehearsal was not satisfactory to Andreas. A couple of times he stopped singing and just waited for the song to end.

The songs in the fourth semi final of Melodifestivalen will be aired on radio at 21:00 CET tonight at www.sr.se. Later tonight an esclusive poll will be published based on the audiencereactions after the first public rehearsal.

There are new photos from today’s rehearsals in the Gallery.