Series of baseball was for me as a kid.”
Mattias Johansson is president of the
Swedish branch of the OGAE (Organisation
Generale des Amateurs de l’Eurovision),
an international Eurovision fanclub. The
group has about 400 members, making it
one of Europe’s biggest, and they organise
regular get-togethers, from picnics to gala
dinners and voting nights, including two
big parties a year – one in the autumn
and one for the Melodifestivalen final.
This year, 250 people came, watching
the final before having their own party
with a Eurovision-only DJ set and live
performances from Eurovision acts. “We
have a great variety of people – male and
female, old and young – but they just all
share a love for this kind of music,” he says.
Johansson – who names Annabel
Conde’s
Vuelve Con Migo
for Spain in 1995
as his all-time favourite Eurovision tune –
says it’s the tradition and the family aspect
that drew him to Eurovision in the first
place. “I remember being six years old and
watching my first one with the family,” he
says. “It was a party with the whole family.
There was just something really cosy about
everyone around getting excited about the
same thing.
“
I’m a history fan, and as I grew up I
started to go back in time, looking at bands
like Abba, who’ve become a part of my
life,” he continues. “Sweden has entered
almost every year since 1958, so there’s a
rich tradition and culture there. Everyone
in Sweden has grown up with it.”
Although the Melodifestivalen final
doesn’t take place until mid-March, from
autumn of the previous year the papers are
full of gossip about which artists
»
“
The Melodifestivalen and
Eurovision are to Sweden what
the Superbowl is to America”
E
urovision has long seemed
like an unlikely prong in
the makeup of Brand
Sweden. There’s the
minimalist design, the edgy
fashion, the cool electropop singers, the
world-renowned social welfare… And then
there’s Eurovision. It’s loud, it’s brash, it’s
cheesy – and Sweden loves it. Last year,
when Loreen won the country’s fifth
Eurovision title (only Ireland has won
more), more than a third of the country
tuned in to watch.
But even the popularity of
Eurovision pales in comparison with the
Melodifestivalen, or Melo, the national
singing contest which is shown on
television every Saturday night through
the winter, and whose winner represents
Sweden at Eurovision. Melo has run since
1959,
and cosy Saturday nights watching
it have become an integral part of the
Swedish wintertime, with stores reporting a
rush on crisps and fizzy drinks on Saturday
afternoons.
The Melodifestivalen final this March –
in which former boyband member Robin
Stjernberg surprisingly beat off Yohio, a
17-
year-old boy who looks like a Japanese
cosplay girl – was watched by more than
4.13
million Swedes. The same event in
2012
was the year’s most-watched show
in Sweden, with the various stages of the
contest taking third, fourth and fifth in the
annual viewing rankings; the Eurovision
final came in sixth (the iconic Donald Duck
Christmas Eve show was second).
“
The Melodifestivalen and Eurovision
are to Sweden what the Superbowl is to
America,” says David Landes, an American
who edits The Local, an online portal for
Swedish news in English. Landes had never
heard of Eurovision when he arrived in
Sweden in 2000; now, he says he’s become
a convert, partly because he has two young
children, and for them it’s an unavoidable
part of life.
“
You just get swept up in it,” he says.
“
People have Melo viewing parties or
gather in bars, and all the kids know the
songs. My four-year-old prances around
and sings Melo songs, and at the end
of the year all the forms at school do a
performance – there will always be three
or four songs from the Melodifestivalen in
there. It’s a cultural marker, like the World
Last year’s champion,
Loreen, doesn’t quite
fit the mould of the
smiling Miss World-style
Eurovision winner.
Known for her politics,
she met activists at
last year’s event in
Azerbaijan, before
criticising the country’s
human rights record
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