Welcome on Grand Final day here at the 60th Eurovision Song Contest live in Vienna. We are tired, we are exhausted…but we have one party still in our engines for this year. In this final ESC Insight Newsletter for the season (ok, there is one on Monday, but still) catch up with all the things you need to know before the Saturday night finale.
In our column from Newsletter Editor Ben Robertson he tells us what he wants to win tonight. You are allowed to ignore him. Here he argues why Sweden, with Måns Zelmerlöw’s ‘Heroes‘, would be our best option for a winner out of the 27 song long list (and yes, Ben lives in Sweden, so he might be just a little bit biased).
‘Heroes’ is the first song to take this new trend of arena-country-pop into a Eurovision stage, and one of the first attempts to make a genre so radio dominated into performance music. That craft, much of which I attribute to long-underrated producer Anton Malmberg Hård af Segerstad who finally wins Melodifestivalen, is very cleverly executed. How the song teases and builds in the chorus so it hits as hard as it does is exemplary, as is how the projection backdrop matches with the music and how they shoehorn into the uptempo song the now-obligatory jury note to show it’s here for business. It is a precision-piece of songwriting well worthy of winning the Song Contest.
And yes it’s Sweden, the nation that now seems too big for it’s boots in Eurovision and has Head of Delegation Christer Björkman bemoaning week-on-week why they have to qualify when the Big 5 send garbage to the Song Contest. Whether he has a point of not is away from the spirit of the Contest in this turbulent period in May. But in terms of songwriters we are looking at those from a new generation, a power couple with a surname not Kempe or G:Son who write honest pop songs that are stunningly effective. We have an artist who is genuine and sweet with all he meets and is probably the person this year who most embraces the Song Contest ideals and passions. They are all fantastic ambassadors for the modern Sweden I want portrayed in the world.
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