Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

Loreen of Sweden is the 15th previous Eurovision song contest winner who has decided and/or managed give it another try. Only Ireland's Johnny Logan has managed to win twice, as we all know. One can't really do a ranking however as the contest had changed so much from the 1950's with maybe a dozen songs to the approx 40 we have these days. In coming days I will feature the winners who decided to come back  after  winning the contest as there also many winners who have won with their second or third try. Charlotte Perrelli (48), ex Nilsson went solo in Melodifestivalen 1999 after having sung with several dancebands since she was 13. Her heavily ABBA inspired schlager banger Tusen och en natt won and went on winning in Jerusalem as well 17 points ahead of Iceland's Selma, the hot pre-contest favorite whose song was very up-to-date instead. Nostalgia won and Sweden took its 4th win. She gained great success at home and some abroad touring Europe and Middle East, was voted ...

The Mamas could become the 27th artist from 2020 season to have it another go this year, if they win tonight Melodifestivalen 2021. Besides them Eurovision 1999 winner Charlotte Perrelli (1999, 2008) and veterans Eric Saade (2011) and Arvingarna (1993) are in, with previous fan favorites and runner ups Dotter (2020) and Danny Saucedo (runner up for both Eric Saade 2011 and Loreen 2012). Another favorite is Idols 2019 winner Tusse and a total outsider against all odds Clara Klingeström. The songs are the usual Mello mix, polished but rather uninteresting and soulless perfection with thought after stagings but at least this year it's quite open and interesting to see who eventually wins.  Danny Saucedo - Dandi dansa *** Klara Hammarström - Beat of broken hearts ** Anton Ewald - New religion ** The Mamas - In the middle ** Paul Rey - The missing piece * Charlotte Perrelli - Still young ** Tusse - Voices **** Alvaro Estrella - Baila baila *** Clara Klingenström - Behöver inte dig idag ...

 Mahmood & co enjoyed a mudful day at Dead Sea  Sergey found the sign.  Tamara found Old Jaffa.  Wake up, meditation over, Eliot!  Kate the Copycat.  Strike a face!  Ding dong, Krista is everywhere.  Lake Mudawi.    Wallflowers Darude & Sebastian.  One big Eurovision family.    Fuego!  Take me to your doublechin heaven.  Home is where the doublechin is.  Proud display of a tongue. Jump!

Every now and then Eurovision song contest winners come back to the contest and looking back quite often it hasn't been such a good idea. A total of 14 previous winners have managed to return (and even more have tried but failed to win the national final. Latest of them is Swedish Loreen last year). In this series I have a brief look at them and how did it go..... If Dana International became the first Eurovision winner not to make the final again, it was a close call for Charlotte Perrelli. To her luck in 2008-2009 there was the jury wildcard rule or only the top-9 of the semifinalists qualified for the final and the jury chose the 10th one. In 1999 Charlotte Nilsson won Melodifestivalen with Tusen och en natt , and thanks to the new rule of free language it became Take me to your heaven in Jerusalem and she beat Iceland's Selma with 17 points taking a somewhat surprise win. Conflicts with SVT caused her to stay out of Eurovision song contest in 2000, breaking ...

Sweden kicks of its Melodifestivalen tonight, the most overrated and hyped about national selection in the universe. Sure it's great entertainment and show, but what about the music? Oh well... After hearing the one minute snippets from semifinal this is more true than ever before. It's more boring than any other selection I have heard this year from any country. Period. Out of seven songs I only got minimally interested in that one of Nano. The only one I have never ever heard of. Save the best for last indeed. He should win this hands down and become this year's phenomenon and as I have no high hopes for any other act in coming weeks even win the whole damn thing. As usual people will vote two songs straight to the final, two to the second chance round and for the other three it's game over and fight for the place in the charts..... Watch here from 21 CET Semifinal 1: 4 February, Göteborg Boris René – Her kiss -> Andra chansen Adrijana – Amare = 6...

The Stockholm department store NK is having its share of Eurovision celebrations as it's visual marketing crew has created six windows celebrting the six Swedish Eurovision song contest winners. I think the one with Carola takes the prize!

Melodifestivalen acts will be announced next Monday and Tuesday. The rumor mill of possible participants has been running wild for weeks already and finally we know who are really in and who are not. What we know so far is that Sanna Nielsen will debut as the host and with her will be Robin Paulsson , a very well known television host, also him making his MF debut. We also know one of the contestants already, Kalle Johansson . He won the Svensktoppen nästä 2014 contest and the award was a ticket to Melodifestivalen 2015.  SVT received 2.177 songs this year and it seems the famous Swedish schlager is making a comeback. There are minor changes to the format and instead of 32 songs there will be only 28, but 12 of them will advance to the final instead of 10. Makes sense? Måns Zelmerlöv is supposed to be making a comeback to the contest, as are Lili & Susie, Linus Svenning and Charlotte Perrelli . Sean Banan has also made it clear he has sent a song. Other names ru...

The Eurovision Cruise weekend is in full swing in Helsinki for the 5th time and last night special guests from Spain took the stage of the Eurovision Night at Hercules Night club.  Mirela opened the night by singing some Spanish entries like Dime and Vuelve conmigo, Euphoria and of course her own entry from 2009, Nada es comparable a ti (4th). Jorge Gonzales wasn't any less and delivered among others Dile que la quiero and even a Spanish cover of Zeljko Joksimovic's Nije ljubav stvar (2012). The house was packed with international Eurovision fans before the sold out cruise with guests from at least 23 different countries. In short year's Eurovision Cruise has grown to the biggest annual Eurovision event after the contest itself what comes to the number of attending people.  Tonight the party continues aborad Baltic Queen with Charlotte Perrelli, Nicky French, Softengine and CatCat . Well done, OGAE Finland!

Once again OGAE Finland is organising the Eurovision Cruise  on September 6-7. This is already the 5th annual edition and the event gathered last year 2000 fans from Finland and abroad to enjoy among others Valentina Monetta , Krista Siegfrids and Marion Rung performing aboard. This time they have got Eurovision winner Charlotte Perrelli , Finland's entrants this year, Softengine , UK's 2000 entrant Nikki French to perform along with hosts CatCat ! And there's more, check out the FB page for further information.  But that's not all. The fun for fans starts already the night before (September 5) at Hercules with the 28th Eurovision Fanclub night (more info here ). DJ Ohrmeister will be there and it's an excellent kick off to meet again your friends and enjoy some Eurovision. Before that there's a warm up dinner at Manala restaurant. But there's still more. Before the real cruise on September 6 you can enjoy aboard m/s Emma some Helsinki sightse...

Life in the Disney's Duck universe centres on the city of Duckburg in the fictional U.S. state of Calisota. Sometimes characters visit the real world and/or meet historical figures. Sometimes characters from the real world go and visit Ducksburg instead. Now the appearance of Conchita Duck has caused a huge row in some circles, forcing the German creators of the character at Ehapa-Verlag to promise she will remain a marketing gag and will not be featured in any of the official Disney comic strips - even if the comic is apparently already drawn up and ready to be published shortly, as announced by the Austrian tv earlier. How can a beard be so judged in this world today, this blogger wonders.... Mind you, it's not the first time Eurovision artists are appearing in the Disney comics; in Sweden likes of Loreen, Carola, Charlotte Perrelli & co were featured a couple of years ago, Lordi has been in the pages of the Finnish comic (only mentioned, not featured sadly) and for ex...

Or rather his Swedish version Kalle Anka with some guests who look a lot like Carola, Loreen, Charlotte Perrelli, the Olsen Brothers, ABBA, Alexander Rybak and so on..... 

Loreen's winning entry Euphoria of 2012 Eurovision song contest won't be heard in the final it seems but in the first semifinal on May 14, 2013. She will reprise her Melodifestivalen 2013 interval act performance using kid's choir and sign language - only that it all gets bigger and better. A total of 69 kids will be on stage with her and it all makes sense as May 14 is the international sigh language day.  However, this isn't the first time SVT snobs the previous year's local winner. In 2000 Charlotte Perrelli didn't get to re-perform her Take me to your heaven (actually she refused to appear at all as she was reduced as a mere flower girl, as the rumors say), nor Carola her Fångad av en stormvind , but she got to open the final with another song, All the reasons to live .

Charlotte Perrelli ex-Nilsson ex-Ingrosso is taking part again in the Swedish summer institution, the Diggiloo tour . The problem is she's pregnant and due to have the baby in early August, while the tour end on August 17. What to do? Nothing. She plans to go on and hopes the delivery should happen on a day off and she'd be back on stage the after or maybe two. No subsitution for her.  Maybe the other starts like Lotta Engberg and David LIngdren will have to act as midwives for her this summer? "It's a popular show. I don't need to wear tank tops and shorts anyways " she comments, "I will take time in the fall and rest!" She's The Girl! Currently she is also working on a pregnancy training book....

Many have been surprised - and not pleased - with Robin Stjernberg's victory with You in Melodifestivalen 2013. Gustav Dahlander explains some possible reasons why the international juries preferred Robin and snobbed YOHIO . The juries voted on Friday and in the rehearsals all favorites seemed to have failed in way or the other: YOHIO missed the long climax vote and was saving his voice it seems, Ralf Gyllenhammar gave a nervous and less inspired performance and was all but pleased after it. He was back on track on Saturday, as was YOHIO, too late. Ulrik Munther wasn't in top form either, partly caused by problems in his ear piece it seems. Anton Ewald had some hip problems in his dance number. It didn't harm his vocal perfomance (but then he wasn't singing anyways) but his dancing, that the number was entirely built upon. So, Robin just got better and better by each performance and it paid of. He had however quite a struggle to get that far: in his semifinal he ...

No, she didn't just eat too much Christmas food or skip champagne on New Year's without a reason. Charlotte Perrelli, born Nilsson is happily pregnant. The baby is due this summer and she's relieved it's just one as they thought first she was with twins. She has just finished with the Evita musical (hmm, Madonna got pregnant while filming Evita ...). Charlotte has two sons from her ex-husband Nicola Ingrosso, later changed to Perrelli (whose brother Emilio Ingrosso was married to another songbird, Pernilla Wahlgren!), Angelo and Alessio. Now she's dating Anders Jensen who is, obviously the lucky father. And he has a daughter, Izabella.  Despite her pregnancy she plans to participate in this summer's Diggi-loo tour as usual! And did you know she, too, has her own perfume, The Girl ?

Apparently not but a fake. But just the thought about it was so funny, or rather some comments I read on internet. This is supposed to be Aurora Borealis, that I believe isn't very common wonder of nature in south of Sweden but who cares if it makes a good logo? Anyways, some see it as Loreen's hair. And now it all makes sense as if the 2000 logo was Charlotte's botoxed lips, the 2013 logo should be Loreen's colored hair? Right? If this is so, I'm afraid to think what comes next when Sweden wins again.... 

The stage in Baku's Crystal Hall hasn't probably yet been completely taken down when in Sweden the guessing for the future Eurovision 2013 hosts are being discussed in a serious matter. At the moment there are two front runners, namely Måns Zelmerlöf and sarah Dawn Finer. Both singers with Melodifestivalen experience. Måns also has gone a long way from Cara mia to become Sweden's hottest male host in TV, and Sarah of course charmed the nation and not only as one of the hostesses for Melodifestivalen this year. And what to say about her alter ego Lynda Woodruff who gave out the Swedish votes in Baku? Could she take it over? But there are about two dozen other names in the talks from Gina Dirawi to Jovan Radomir, from Charlotte Perrelli to lena Philipsson, Carola, Mark Levengood and Petra Mede. Just to name a few. 

Two Eurovision fan favourites and failures in the result table have joined forces for this rather infectious little dance number, Little braveheart . Has Kate dumped another failure Soraya has her home girl? (*"failure" is used here with all love and admiration. They all should have done better!)

Charlotte Perrelli who did a flop in 2008 with Hero but won the Eurovision 1999 as Nilsson with Take me to your heaven is giving it another go this year with The girl . A sure fan favourite. The rehearsals didn't go totally as planned today. A backing singer smashed the microphone into her front tooth. " I just heard it crack " she commented afterwards. Now she needs to fix it before tomorrow night's live broadcast. She also revealed they have spent over 113.000 euros for the entry (or one million in local money) and can't afford to go to Second Chance. "I need to go directly to the final or be kicked out!" she said. Didn't Carola have similar tooth problems in Athens?

Many artists have represanted their country in Eurovision twice. Some even three or four times or maybe even more in various duos, trios or groups and we don't even want to talk about backing singers and so on. Only Johnny Logan has won twice as a singer but we have four artists that nearly made it as well: Lys Assia, Gigliola Cinquetti, Linda Martin and Dima Bilan . On the other hand one can wonder if Linda and Diman ever came back if they won the first time? Lys and Gigliola made it to second after being a winner already before. Then we have Anne-Marie David who came third the second time around and Carola who won after being already third previously. For example. On the other hand we have recent examples from Charlotte Perrelli, Niamh Kavanagh and Dana International that previous winners are not treated with due respect anymore (in this blogger's opinion each deserved better) and it might even be more difficult for them to impress voters these days. Or what do you thi...