There's a most curious subplot bubbling up in this year's Melodifestivalen. It's long been assumed that the whole series of shows is nought but a long-winded anointment of a returning, ahem, hero. In fact, so sure has Eurovisionia been that Måns' somewhat asthmatic version concept of Revolution is going to win the whole dang shebang that it crept to favourite in the betting before anyone had heard a note of it. But now that it's finally been shown to the masses, there's been a grudging admission that even though it's not actually all that good, but it's probably going to be sending us back to somewhere expensive in Sweden again next year. We like to call it the Only Teardrops option - a song that no one really wholeheartedly liked, but assumed was going to win, so kind of willed it to win by an accidental collective consciousness.
But there is one small pocked of resistance building up a head of steam, and it came from the same heat in Malmö. It turns out that many folk are getting a bit weary of the same old same old that MelFest has been dealing us over the last few years. An endless parade of highly mid songs that sound a bit like more successful songs - a concept that's become a tad more post-modern, as Revolution sounds a little bit like Måns' last winner that sounded a bit like something else - only with every last semblance of fun squeezed coarsley out of it. Step forward three chaps from over the water in Ostrobothnia - a Swedish outpost on the West Coast of Finland that the Swedes like to call East Sweden. Their schtick is to perform in the Vörå dialect - a kind of mutant mix of Finnish and Swedish that hardly anyone else can entirely understand.
They might be bringing a curious argot with them, but they also bring a bit of fun - a commodity sadly lacking at MF over the last few years. Their jaunty song about having a sauna might not break too many originality boundaries, but it's a well put together performance by an act at the top of their game - and somehow more and more people are beginning to get behind it. We've long hoped that SVT would tire of delivering the same old successful slop year after year and let their hair down a bit, and there have been many missed opportunities in recent history. Swingfly, Panetoz, Medina and Eva and Ewa to name but a few. Songs that are there to add a light touch to a Saturday night light entertainment show for locals, but who would have been cracking options for the big show in and of their own right.
After the initial dismay of Måns, as lovely as he is, having seemingly rendered this year's contest a tad neutered, the resistance is building for the sauna boys and a head of steam is building behind them. And if they manage to pull this off, well, that would be the real revolution - not some smiling bloke in a long coat being eaten by the scenery as he sings the same meaningless word over and over and over again. We most definititely viva that particular revolution.
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