WHEN?: Saturday 13 February 2021
WHERE?: Annexet, Stockholm
The biggest story of Melodifestivalen 2021 is the return of 2020’s top 2, The Mamas and Dotter, who were separated by only 1 point back in March 2020.
- Read on for reasons including acts Anton Ewald, Patrik Jean & Frida Green
We were surprised because Sweden doesn’t often make the wrong choice and we had Dotter’s runner-up Bulletproof, a song of the year for us, pegged as a potential contest winner while only tipping The Mamas’ brilliantly sung but far more middle-of-the-road Move to come 5th.
Neither made it to Rotterdam when Eurovision 2020 was postponed for a year but both acts face up to each other in 2021.
We suspected heat news would be later than usual because arena tickets no longer had to be sold in advance. If we were Christer Björkman and producing this year’s show we’d have found it difficult to resist the lure of the headlines and potential viewing audience by having both Dotter and The Mamas in that 1st heat at Stockholm’s Annexet hall on 6/2/21. Who can forget the interest generated when MF’s then-biggest failure Anna Bergendahl returned in 2019’s heat 1 to redeem herself?
We’ll look at what The Mamas have done since March 2020 in our Heat 4 preview to be published on this site around Friday 29 January but for now and below we’re celebrating the songwriting and performance genius of Dotter, real name Johanna Maria Jansson.
7. Dotter Little Tot (Johanna Jansson, Dino Medanhodzic)
Dotter reunites with 1 of the writers of Bulletproof which lost out to The Mamas by 1 vote in the public telephone poll. It was shortlisted ahead of The Mamas as this site’s Song of 2020. The pair were 2 of the writers behind Lina Hedlund’s Victorious which finished 11th in 2019 while Dotter wrote with others for 2018’s pre-contest favourite Cry (watch below) which failed to make it out of its heat.
She released 4 singles post last year’s MF and our favourite of them is the uptempo Backfire, a song of the week for us back in June, which we described then as boasting ‘verses which sound like Sia writing for Rihanna with a speeded-up pop reggae sound that is very Ace Of Base in summer’.
The others were I’m Sorry, Vintern jag var Sexton (The Winter I Was 16) and New Year. The latter in particular gives a sense of the heartbreak she can drawn on and she’s exactly the sort of credible singer/songwriter that hasn’t been victorious at Melodifestivalen in the Björkman years.
Without hearing the songs, she’s the artist we’d most like to see triumph at MF this year and she has a plum closing heat draw here although the signs are that the song may not be as anthemic, bombastic and out=there as Bulletproof was.
- Anton Ewald New Religion (Jonas Wallin, Joe Killington, Anton Ewald, Maja Strömstedt)
Ewald has competed in MF twice finishing 4th in 2013 with Begging and 10th a year later with Natural. Ewald was a backing dancer and choreographer on the show before competing and danced with Danny Saucedo when he finished runner-up in 2012 with Amazing.
2. Julia Alfrida Rich (Julia Alfrida, Jimmy Jansson, Melanie Wehbe)
3. WAHL featuring SAMI 90-talet (90s) (Sami Rekik, Christopher Wahlberg, Josefin Glenmark, Jesper Welander, Andreas Larsson)
4. Frida Green The Silence (Anna Bergendahl, Bobby Ljunggren, David Lindgren Zacharias, Joy Deb)
5. Eva Rydberg and Ewa Roos Rena rama ding dong (Göran Sparrdahl, Kalle Rydberg, Ari Lehtonen)
6. Patrik Jean Tears Run Dry (Herman Gardarfve, Patrik Jean, Melanie Wehbe)
Keep an eye on monstagigz.com during January as we’ll be previewing 2021’s 28 entries. During February this site will predict how each heat will go on the Friday after we’ve heard the songs before the Saturday events. In March we’ll forecast how the finalen will go and how each of the 12 qualifiers would do in May in Rotterdam at Eurovision.
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