A year ago our Swedish Integration Board published a study about Swedish values in regards to other cultures. It showed that Swedes have the most different values of all countries. Or “atypical and deviant” as the study said. The values that we have that the study metioned was:

How we reject strong leaders and fights for representative democracy where the leaders truly listen to their voters.

How we wants everything to be open and accessible especially when it comes to political decision making.

We also had the worlds highest level of trust to others.

But they failed to mention how Melodifestivalen affects us as a people. If you are in a representative sample of Swedes and want to chit-chat and ask them what their team they support most people will laugh. Sport isn’t that big here. Some love it but most don’t. If you ask what church they attend most will say “none” and it will be sort of true. Religion is supposed to be a private matter and we often are described as a totally secularized country. In that matter I just want to add that even if people say no Swede goes to church we are described as a country where going to the movies are very common and there are more visitors to churches than to the movies so it isn’t entirely true that we have no church goers and most people are believers at heart, they just don’t go to church.

But if you ask that group what they think about this years Melodifestvalen contributions you will get some reaction from everyone. There will be four distinct groups. The one that are first to tell you that they hate it. They will later on still tell you what tunes they hate especially much and probably knows the lyrics to many of them. Then we have the group that tells you that they don’t really like it but the half-time show can be fun to watch and it will turn out that they watch every minute of it. Then there are always some who really don’t watch it. Then we have the final group, we who adore it. All gay men are assumed to be in this group and that is fairly true.

But no matter what group you are in every Swede has seen the Melodifestivalen many, many times. Many families have traditions of what to eat during it.

Until a couple of years ago there was only one show every year. Now we have a system with five parts before the big final show. Yesterday was one of them. Two winners from that show goes to the big show in Stockholm.

After the Stockholm winner has been televoted to success they go off to the big Eurovision Song Contest. When I was little we won that now and then but nowadays the eastern Europe does better there so we are more focused on the Swedish parts.

A big part of the Melodifestivalen are all the bad contributions. Either with people who can’t really sing or just doing something that was supposed to be crazy fun but just became crazy embarrassing. Without those contributios the Melodifestivalen wouldn’t be the same. Sometimes the absurd and strange songs wins. Last week was one of them times. No one could really believe it was true when this came on: (Don’t miss it when the dancers pull out flags from their ass in the end.)

Then we have the really good contributions that everyone just love for real. Yesterday was one of those times. Two identical twins that we just fell in love with immediately. They are known as backups singers to a childrens band in Sweden and they have worked with music in many ways for years but this was something new that we all loved and they immediately got a place in the big final:

The reason why Melodifestivalen are so lovable is because we both get to listen to our biggest stars and get to see new stars rising. It was this way ABBA became famous. Many times it isn’t about the winner, many stars has been born just by being on Melodifestivalen.

Before 2002 everyone had to sing in Swedish and then they translated the winning song to English to sing in the Eurovision Song Contest.

There are so many reasons to love Melodifestivalen. One is that it is so easy to dislike. There will always be several songs you just hate. There are always some really strange dance or clothing. Some really good parts besides the music, the glamour, the fun or beautiful half time shows, the perfect mix of newcomers and veterans in the game, the families and friends gathering is that when we look back on the winners we get such a nice journey through time.

To round this up I will do just that and you will get the Swedish and the English version of a schlager every Swedes knows and most in my age know every single word and nuance by Carola, one of our most famous Melodifestivalen artists. She has won it three times and one time she also won the whole Eurovision Song Contest. She had a contribution yesterday that wasn’t that good but here are the song Främling/Stranger the winner of Melodifestivalen 1983. First in Swedish and then English.

No pressure but if you want to make it in the gay scene in Sweden you just have to learn this:

Well, now I am off to a quaker meeting. I will tell you all more about that later. If anyone in the Umeå area is interested to know more about quakerism in Sweden you are welcome to Rågången 2C at 14.00 today Sunday Feb. 17.

(A short breakdown for you who likes this: Melodifestivalen are the words melodi (melody) and festival (festival) put together with the definite article “en” in the end. We like to do longer and longer words so the melody festival becomes melodifestivalen. In the same way we can make any word. The trans blogger becomes transbloggaren (bloggare swedish for blogger). We share many words in Swedish and English but the grammar is rather different)