Eurovision Selections: Two Very Different Shows

This weekend has seen two national selection contests for Eurovision (alright there has been more but I only watched two!). One was Your Country Needs You, which selects the UK entry. The other was Melodifestivalen, which selects Sweden's entry. They were very different entities... 

So this year we went back to the old "all on one day" format of Your Country Needs You. Last year's format of having 6 contestants who were gradually voted off by the public and the judge (Andrew Lloyd Webber) was great especially as Webber hadn't written the song until he saw who was in the final and who might be able to carry it off best. 

This year Pete Waterman was in charge of the song, and after some truly abysmal performances of Waterman classics and then a final 3 set of performances of the "winning song", we ended up with Josh Dubovie, 19 from Essex as our performer singing "That Sounds Good To Me". I can't say I'm inspired by the song. Given Waterman's record it is actually pretty awful. Couldn't we just have sent Steps??? 





Anyway, if you wish to hear the winning entry a video is here. I just wish we had an open competition in which actual artists could compete with their own songs and allow the best one to win. Alas... we must leave that for: 

Melodifestivalen is less a televisual event than it is a Swedish religion. Weeks of musical shenanigans in a large arena resulted in last night's final in which ten songs competed for the glory of Eurovision stardom. Not only were the songs and singers all of a higher calibre than our lacklustre one's. but the voting was done on a semi international basis with foreign juries and Swedish public votes all leading to the final result. That left them with the far better "This Is My Life" by Anna Bergendahl

Although I have to say I really enjoyed Eric Saade's Manboy:

Roll on Eurovision!