Rubbishgai this may make me but this MF will be all about Elena (I'm saying this after a trifecta of 'Mambo', 'Heroes' and 'Gigolo' *.*)

Babes I'm here for Elena too but that hook-nosed bitch is FIFTH ON THE LIST (below Jess, San, Lind and SHIRL, in that order)

 

(although out of anybody realistically in contention I will willingly bump her up to second)

it is my new year's resolution to try and get into this

so someone explain: what is it and how does it work?

Oh my god I'm SO HAPPY!

Here's the first heat thread I did last year, which gives a brief précis on the nature of it all, and I'll be doing another this year. But the basics:

 

- It's the Swedish preselection for Eurovision, but because they can pull in some of Sweden's biggest stars it's leagues ahead of almost all the others to the extent that it's actually bigger than Eurovision in Sweden (the third heat (in fact, al of them) last year beat the final of Eurovision itself, which is remarkable given they were HOSTING.).

 

- Its all things to all people in Sweden (it normally gets north of 40% of the population watching each year) as it has a lot of musical diversity to cater to all tastes, although obviously it has its reputation based in middle-aged schlager dollies/gays voxing/noxing their lives out over high-end pop for the sake of another career revival (which is what we are ALL here for frankly)

 

- Four heats of eight songs each. The top two of each heat go straight to the final, third and fourth go to a repêchage round (andra chansen), fifth through eighth go towards ignominious career failure (or at least career shame for a year or two if they have prior rep). After the voting, the top five go through to a second round of voting and the bottom three are knocked out (leading to deeply giffable grimaces/scowls as they sit in the background for the rest of the show). Then the first qualifier for the final is announced, performs, the two andra chansen qualifiers are announced (who attempt to process how they're supposed to take being kind of popular but not really), then the final qualifier for the final is announced head to head with the fifth placer in Globen or Bust, which is screencap GOLD.

 

- You probably won't enjoy 75% of the music but you'll enjoy most of the performance moments, there's invariably some hot mess about. And the variation means that it's almost inevitable you'll end up getting at least one or two take-home tracks you'll love each year. And there's always some WORLD CLASS hyperbole/commentary going on too.

Here's the first heat thread I did last year, which gives a brief précis on the nature of it all, and I'll be doing another this year. But the basics:

 

- It's the Swedish preselection for Eurovision, but because they can pull in some of Sweden's biggest stars it's leagues ahead of almost all the others to the extent that it's actually bigger than Eurovision in Sweden (the third heat (in fact, al of them) last year beat the final of Eurovision itself, which is remarkable given they were HOSTING.).

 

- Its all things to all people in Sweden (it normally gets north of 40% of the population watching each year) as it has a lot of musical diversity to cater to all tastes, although obviously it has its reputation based in middle-aged schlager dollies/gays voxing/noxing their lives out over high-end pop for the sake of another career revival (which is what we are ALL here for frankly)

 

 

-

 

 

 

- Four heats of eight songs each. The top two of each heat go straight to the final, third and fourth go to a repêchage round (andra chansen), fifth through eighth go towards ignominious career failure (or at least career shame for a year or two if they have prior rep). After the voting, the top five go through to a second round of voting and the bottom three are knocked out (leading to deeply giffable grimaces/scowls as they sit in the background for the rest of the show). Then the first qualifier for the final is announced, performs, the two andra chansen qualifiers are announced (who attempt to process how they're supposed to take being kind of popular but not really), then the final qualifier for the final is announced head to head with the fifth placer in Globen or Bust, which is screencap GOLD.

 

- You probably won't enjoy 75% of the music but you'll enjoy most of the performance moments, there's invariably some hot mess about. And the variation means that it's almost inevitable you'll end up getting at least one or two take-home tracks you'll love each year. And there's always some WORLD CLASS hyperbole/commentary going on too.

if there's anything like cookies n beans, count me IN (for all the wrong reasons)

DRAT you read before I finished. Anyway. I think I PASSED OUT from a laughter coma when video effects straight out of 1993 slammed in during the middle eight for Cookies N Beans.

ASIDE: before you go off and do any discovering, I should add the disclaimer that the last two years have been below-par but on namepower alone 2014 looks like a veritable FEAST

it's okay love muffin, i've edited it to fix it with another gap for you to add more should you need be

 

i am fully (and deadpanly) onboard *.*

You SHOULD BE.

(that's noxing over LOW-END pop for the record.

 

But WHAT NOXING/LOW-END POP *.*)

You SHOULD BE.

strikes me as a star in the top shelf movie 'mama there's a milf in my bedroom!'

Oh Cookies'N'Beans! Such Loose Women Dixie Chicks Tribute REALNESS!

As IF any of them would be LOOSE. Talk about ALLERGIC TO COCK

THEORETICALLY Loose, babes!

do we (look at me begfriend of the gang) not hear anything of these tunes until the week of performance then? when do performances start who should do well etc?

We see a one-minute clip of each song the Thursday two days before each heat, and they release mp3s (normally full but last year all but the last thirty seconds to stop piracy) on the Saturday afternoon. Each heat starts 7pm Saturday and is streamed live on SVT's website internationally.

 

Part of the appeal is that it's almost IMPOSSIBLE to discern who will do well outside of a few really, really massive names - there've been as many surprise flops as surprise breakout stars over the years, but you can generally tell who the producers favour by a couple of things - loads of interviews on the SVT site in the lead-up, expenditure on performance (sometimes - not always, but it's rare something will have a bomb spent on it when it won't go through. but when that happens it's done in STYLE), and heat ordering - if someone gets given last, first, or sixth (don't ask) slot in a heat it's indicative of a big name or a big performance.

 

This year Anton Ewald - last year's breakout début pop star who finished fourth - has got the pimp slot of the whole thing with last in the final heat, and is notionally one of the big favourites. He's back with YOHIO, a 17 year old visual kei artist who does pop punk and who finished second last year, although this year YOHIO has a song written by the Swedish equivalent of Gary Barlow so there's no way of knowing how that's going to go (and hence he's not as hyped as a potential winner, although he still has a really big profile)

 

There are also load of big name stars who've entered in a lot of years before returning though: Sanna Nielsen (white bread schlager girl done good who's been entering MF since her teens, always does well, national treasure) is the current favourite in the odds. I'll put in more when I do the heat write-ups as I don't want to give it ALL away, but my guess is that this year it'll be Anton Ewald vs Sanna vs a breakout star from one of the new faces.

- You probably won't enjoy 75% of the music but you'll enjoy most of the performance moments, there's invariably some hot mess about. And the variation means that it's almost inevitable you'll end up getting at least one or two take-home tracks you'll love each year. And there's always some WORLD CLASS hyperbole/commentary going on too.

 

2009 was my first year; and I enjoyed probably 90% of the songs. That was the only really unbelievably strong year since than tho.

2009 was my first year; and I enjoyed probably 90% of the songs. That was the only really unbelievably strong year since than tho.

That was more at Jake specifically. I enjoyed pretty much all of the songs last year on some level but I thought it was a weak year because it lacked in highlights. I think 2009 and 2011 have been the best in the last few...