Of late, Sweden have been one of Eurovision's most successful nations, with their last win just 7 years ago in 1999.  Of course, Sweden are famous for quite possibly the biggest Eurovision export ABBA who won in 1974.  Between then and 1999 they won twice more, in 1984 and 1991 with the popular Carola.  Their recent run of Eurovision success has been great - entering sound songs securing them 1st in 1999, 7th in 2000, 5th in 2001, 8th in 2002, 5th in 2003 and 6th in 2004 - never once facing relegation.  Unfortunately their time was up in 2005, when Martin Steinmarck finished a terrible 19th place out of 24 - one of Sweden's worst ever results.  The song wasn't great - but as a member of Europe, you really shouldn't sing about America - alot of countries really aren't taking to kindly to it.  Anyways, Sweden find themselves in the Semi-Final for the first time, and as far as they're concerned, the last time.

 

 

Remember the lady who I said won in 1991? Well this is her, hoping to repeat the success of recent comebacks such as Elena and Chiara last year and trying to avoid the misfortune of others (Constantinos and Selma, also last year).  Some people criticise the song for being too 'Sweden' or too 'Eurovision', but I personally think this is a good thing.  Sweden always have good entries, and sticking to the safe option has never done them badly in the past.  Indeed, look at what happened when they tried something different last year.  I really like the Swedish thing that the Swedes have going on in their music, it certainly works for me anyway, and I think Invincible is an insatiable slice of great pop music which is sure to live up to its name.  Going by the live final, Carola is certainly a polished performer who knows what she's about and how to sing flawlessly, so I would expect big theings from this, big things indeed.

 

 

This song surely has what it takes to be a winner - class, catchiness, a great performer, and a rousing melody.  It's one of my definate qualifiers for the Semi-Final, but I don't think it'll do as well in the Final, solely due to the competition.  A lot of this will of course depend on the draw in the Final, coming up in the last four is certainly what Sweden needs in order to pull through and come off tops, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens on the Thursday night.

 

 

Another performance I was expecting more from, nonetheless, she qualified.  It seemed that the music and the backing was louder than Carola, and she did a really disgusting thing with her mouth (rather like a spasm) when she was holding long, high notes.  If Carola sorts this out she has evey chance of winning the thing.  It's a great song and was well presented in the Semi, so good luck Sweden!

 

 

Well, if I had to pick three songs that should have won that didn't, this would be one of them.  Carola was *great*.  There was one simple flaw in the song that could have earned it a few more points - maybe even brought it closer to victory... If you watch the end of the song it looked like she got a bit lost and she lost the very effective high notes when she repeats 'invincible' 'one love supreme' etc after her backing singers, but only Eurovision fans would have noticed and it still sounds great.  That's all I can fault, the mouth spasms were still there, but I managed to appreciate them - the vocal was almost perfect and the choreography and general presentation of the song all came across really well.  And looking at my predictions, I was right - yay! One of seven!!