Melodifestivalen, Sweden’s selection show for the Eurovision Song Contest, is approaching the end of its travelling circus for 2019. Every song now plays on constant loop in daycares, offices and shopping centres around the country. However the Swedes have one week more to wait before they select their Song For Europe.
The situation is this. The previous four Saturdays SVT has topped the ratings continuously with seven songs battling for a place in the national football stadium Friends Arena. Each week two songs were selected to go directly to that big show, and another three were kicked out never to return.
The songs finishing 3rd and 4th in each heat, head to one final round. The format has changed slightly from year to year, but this year the eight remaining songs will drop off to four through winner-takes-all duels.
Welcome to Andra Chansen.
Eighteen Years of Second Chances
Melodifestivalen exploded into a six-show format with four heats, Andra Chansen and a Grand Final in 2002. In the early years Andra Chansen was run as a clip show – with the public voting on performances from the heats.
It was in 2007 when Andra Chansen first became an arena show in its own right, when the Rosvalla Arena in Nyköping opened its doors to a sell-out crowd. This year the show returns to Nyköping, a town probably more famous for its low-cost airport (cunningly called ‘Stockholm Stavska’) despite the efforts of the local tourist board. Melodifestivalen fever has taken over this town of under 40,000 people, with local shops blaring the tracks on loop down the high street.
Melodifestivalen flags fly outside the Nyköping Tourist Information Centre and Town Hall (Photo: Ben Robertson, ESC Insight)
However, despite there being 17 previous Andra Chansen rounds in Melodifestivalen’s history with 42 entries qualifying to the Final from it, only one has gone all the way to live the Sångfågel trophy.
Robin Stjernberg was the person to come back from the dead to win Melodifestivalen in 2013 with the song ’You’. Robin’s 14th place result in Eurovision that year is more than respectable, but compared to Sweden’s recent results appears a huge blip. It is Sweden’s only position outside the top seven in the most recent eight years of competition.
Sweden is now alone in having a selection format with a second bite of the cherry for songs to qualify to their local selection final, but back a decade ago such shows in various forms were common across all of the Nordics. The only other Eurovision song to qualify despite being knocked out of its first heat takes us back to Denmark in 2007, where DQ managed to shock to bring ’Drama Queen’ to Helsinki.
Swedish broadcaster SVT have in recent times been at the forefront of revolution in the world of the Eurovision Song Contest. The current voting system is a Melfest tried and tested method and international juries, a staple in selection shows since 2010 in Sweden, are now beginning to infiltrate selections across the continent. It’s therefore interesting to see Andra Chansen largely unaltered – a relic of SVT innovation over a decade ago.
It all leads me to ask, quite bluntly, what is the point of Andra Chansen?
Duels To The Death
The artists for Andra Chansen were introduced to the press in Nyköping by Competition Producer Christer Björkman. First they appeared as individuals, and then introduced pair by pair for each of the four duels taking place on Saturday night. What followed was one of the most fascinating pieces of sociology I have ever seen.
Anna Bergendahl and Andreas Johnson took their photo together, then left and stood stage left. And had a friendly chat together. Vlad Reiser and Nano appeared, posed for the camera, and then stood just a few metres behind and had their own little gossip. As did all the others too. Like children paired up for their first day at school, each of the acts stayed with and bonded with the person they are drawn against to battle. But the mood was so incredibly jovial and friendly; clearly the pressure is off this weekend.
“So the other day I was walking the dog and….” (Photo: Ben Robertson, ESC Insight)
One thing SVT are always immaculately professional with is creating results drama, even when the outcome appears most predictable. During each heat, the order of announcing the qualifiers is first one artist direct to the final, then the two Andra Chansen artists, and finally the last qualifier directly going to the final. This means that when the Andra Chansen artists are announced there are still three options open to them – reaching the final directly, heading the Andra Chansen, or going home dumped out of the competition.
How do artists feel at that precise I’ve-won-but-I’ve-not-really-won moment? Vlad Reiser, competing with the entry ’Nakna i Regnet’, was ”super happy” and ”so excited”, describing the overarching feeling as one of ’relief’. Fellow debutant Rebecka Karlsson also expressed pure joy when she knew she reached this round of competition.
”I didn’t event think I was going to get through – they called out my name and I was like ’are you kidding?’
“I get to do this all over again.”
For artists like Rebecka and Vlad, taking their first footsteps in this schlager bubble, reaching Andra Chansen is a really proud honour in itself. Vlad will now be duelling against Nano, the singer who won Melodifestivalen’s televote in 2017 while Rebecka must defeat 1993 winners Arvingarna to reach the Final. That these artists have done so well that they have reached this stage of competition and legitimately get to compete against such names is sign of success.
They also get to perfect and tweak their performances too. Both will offer a little extra pyro on stage this Saturday night, with all the acts I spoke to confirming they wanted to tighten up camera angles, try new costumes and unleash slightly tweaked choreography to really deliver a performance they were proud of.
When You Need To Listen One More Time
This year’s Andra Chansen is packed with star names in the world of Swedish Eurovision, with all the remaining four this year featuring in Melodifestivalen finals before, and two, Anna Bergendahl and Martin Stenmarck, actually winning the competition in 2010 and 2005 respectively.
Martin Stenmarck is now in his fourth Melodifestivalen appearance. He won on his 2005 debut, came to Andra Chansen in 2014, and was uncerimoniously knocked out of his heat in 2016 – in Melodifestivalen terms he has done it all. His 2019 entry ’Låt skiten brinna’ is a heartfelt track, describing it as a ’conversation I could have with my children’ with lyrics telling a message to breathe deeply and forget the terrible things others would say about you.
For Martin, there is an extra advantage to actually having to appear in the Andra Chansen round.
”I really wanted this song to have another chance – I wanted people to listen to it a lot and the message and the lyrics. It’s a song that grows on you so I think it’s not that bad that we are here in Andra Chansen for that.”
The rules of Andra Chansen do give extra flexibility for artists to promote the song they are performing. Direct qualifiers have to wait until after the last heat to release tracks commercially, but that is not true for those still in the competition via Andra Chansen, who can release directly after their heat. This meant that Martin Stenmarck, who competed in the third heat in Leksand, has had one extra week of radio airplay, Spotify streams and downloads for people to listen more deeply to the message he wants to put on stage.
Martin’s battle partner is 20 year old Lisa Ajax. I first saw Lisa performing in the 2012 edition of Lilla Melodifestivalen. She didn’t win there but has already had a blossoming career since becoming an Idol winner and two time Melodifestivalen finalist. Lisa told me how it was four years ago when she first recorded the vocal to the competing song ’Torn’ in a recording studio, but didn’t at the time feel an emotional connection to the heartbreak lyrics to do it justice. Years later and looking for material for a Melodifestivalen comeback, Lisa explained to me that she was the one who instructed her record label, Universal, to make it happen.
’Torn’ is not just a lyrical new direction but a musical one as well. For years Lisa’s music has been decidedly teenage and poppy, to which her previous Melodifestivalen entries ’My Heart Wants Me Dead’ and ’I Don’t Give A’ are good examples. Instead ’Torn’ is a stripped back piano track filled with suspended chords and emotion to match.
For many regular followers of Lisa and/or Melodifestivalen, presenting herself in this new style can be a surprise – it may take a while for viewers to work out if they like the new Lisa or not. By reaching Andra Chansen Lisa has the opportunity to familiarise the public more with her new style and for the song to grow into the competition.
Only one of Martin or Lisa will be able to reach the Final of Melodifestivalen. Both of them are hoping that even more of the audience love their performance this week and that can carry them to Sweden’s biggest annual TV spectacle.
Modern Eurovision and The Many Paths To Victory
While both Martin and Lisa are proud of their extra chance to perform to the Swedish audience there is a mountain to climb for the acts involved to make it to Tel Aviv this May.
However that doesn’t make Andra Chansen a pointless exercise. Since Lena won for Germany in 2010 there have been a small smatterings of songs that ’went big’ before the actual contest in May. Lena’s entry ’Satellite’ became a radio sensation continent-wide well before arriving in Oslo – and that helped to cement what resulted in a comfortable victory there. It proved that flashy stage shows, gimmicks and loud vocals are not the only way to win the modern Eurovision Song Contest, and it provided another prospective path to victory for artists to take.
Andra Chansen, with the increased radio airtime that songs can get during the competition weeks, allows some less immediate songs a chance to build up a similar momentum with the Swedish audience. If kids have been dancing for weeks to your song at daycare then that is going to result in more support come Saturday night three weeks down the road.
I could also consider Jamala’s 2016 Eurovision victory as prime example as well. Comfortably defeated by Australia’s ’Sound of Silence’ in the Semi Final, Ukraine managed to pip both Australia and Russia to the post. One of the many reasons behind this switch was that the deep sentiment of ’1944’ needed time to capture the attention of press and viewers – it needed to build momentum. Martin Stenmark would be hoping for a similar growth.
For Lisa Ajax, performing again will give viewers another chance to see the new ’her’ – the new style of music she is presenting and it takes time for that to be comfortable to the audience back home. It’s a path to victory that almost worked last year for Felix Sandman. Previously a member of boyband FO&O, Felix presented the ballad ’Every Single Day’ at Melodifestivalen finishing 2nd place with both juries and televoters in the final despite the Andra Chansen stopover.
Yes, you can be instantly infectious and win modern day Eurovision, and many of Sweden’s already qualified finalists in Melodifestivalen deliver those goods so well. However there are many other ways to win, and the slow burn grower is now a completely acceptable way to deliver a perfect Eurovision winner. Andra Chansen provides a great safety net for SVT to ensure songs and performances can take the long, winding path to success with equal chance to those bombing down the motorway.
Melodifestivalen, The Leader of the Pack
So why have the other Nordic nations dropped their Andra Chansen offering? Probably for the same reasons many other countries have ditched long multi-week selection shows in favour of something more similar. To make longer formats successful they have to be a success – something that the artists want to take part in and the viewers still tune in for in droves. Only Sweden would be able to deliver a show on Saturday for people not good enough to qualify directly where the viewing figures will still be in the top 10 for the year and their most recent Eurovision winner will pop up to perform their new single.
I came to Andra Chansen skeptical in all honesty. I came with a vision of it being ineffectual and purely a chance of maximising the amount of TV coverage for each song – and to ensure more people can call themselves Melodifestivalen finalists. I left with a growing respect. It’s in this relaxed and nothing-to-lose environment the artists are able to make the final tweaks and the stories surrounding each performance are given time and attention to grow. I used to think it was wrong if an artist gained popularity at this stage and ‘overperformed’ in the final. My view on that has mellowed out, songs need to capture the imagination of the audience and some styles do just take longer to do that.
21st century Eurovision winners are going to win just as often away from the stage as they are upon it. Truly great National Finals don’t just have diversity of musical styles, but a diversity of ways you can capture the audience’s attention to seize victory.
It’s one reason Melodifestivalen remains the leader of the pack.