The six-week long Melodifestivalen tour has come to its conclusion, and the Swedes have chosen KAJ to represent the country at Eurovision with their song Bara bada bastu. Many people are excited about the choice and what it means for Sweden in Eurovision, while others have been critical. Let’s consider a few of the reasons why I think The Right Song Won!
The language
More and more countries have chosen to compete at Eurovision in their own language recently, and Sweden has been receiving a lot of criticism from Eurofans for always sending songs in English. In fact, the last time Sweden sent a song in Swedish was back in 1998, when the rules still required countries to sing in their own language. A couple of songs in Swedish have won Melodifestivalen since then, but they were translated into English for Eurovision. And it’s been almost 20 years even since the latest one of those, Carola’s Evighet in 2006, which turned into Invincible. Actually, the latest time Swedish was heard in Eurovision, was the Finnish entry in 2012, Pernilla with När jag blundar.
So, it is a big deal that the Swedes have finally voted in an entry sung in Swedish, and even more so considering all the other 11 finalists were in English. But what’s really remarkable is that the Swedish in question represents the Swedish-speaking minority from Finland, and even more specifically the very local dialect of a small place called Vörå in Ostrobothnia. So, hats off for the Melodifestivalen team for asking KAJ to join, that was a genius move.
The cultural significance
Thinking further from the language aspect, there is a wider cultural picture involved. Many Swedes have still seemed rather unaware of the existence and history of the Swedish-speaking Finns. Maybe this is the cultural moment that makes more people understand the reason why these people speak such good Swedish when they move to Sweden from Finland or come to visit. Maybe they will now get that it is indeed their mother tongue, and that they are not just speaking Swedish with a Finnish accent. And maybe now more people will learn the difference between finlandssvenskar and sverigefinnar.
Finland and Sweden shared an 800-year history together before Sweden ceded Finland to Russia in 1809, and Finland went on to become independent in 1917. So, there are close to 300 000 people in Finland with Swedish as their mother tongue, and actually another 65 000 of the Swedish-speaking Finns living in Sweden (making them sverigefinlandssvenskar, you get the picture). This small minority is now getting so much positive publicity in Sweden and later around Europe through this three-minute song, that the exposure is priceless, as it is very important for all minorities to get broader visibility.
All of us in Finland and Sweden are (sauna) brothers and sisters and sometimes need to be reminded of just how close we are. What better way to do that than KAJ having a big breakthrough in both countries simultaneously, having Swedes enjoy a Finnish band and having Finns get hyped about a song sung in Swedish.
The humour
Using humour in your music and making the song fun and sing-along friendly does not make it a “joke entry”. You can be serious about what you are doing and still bring the fun. The trio in KAJ are seriously talented and musical, and they can take on just about any genre (just go and make a deep dive on their YouTube). What is more, entries with a humourous touch have done really well at Eurovision in recent years.
Some of the sore losers among this year’s Mello artists have called this entry a ploy or lamented about the TikTokification of the competition. But we need all kinds of music, not just the high-brow or the polished, not just the critically-acclaimed or the street-credible.
If a Melodifestivalen entry puts a smile on people’s faces and has them singing and dancing along, that’s pretty much exactly what we need right now in this timeline, when the world is getting exceedingly chaotic and scary.
Sweden’s image at Eurovision
The Swedish way of picking their entries for Eurovision for the past 20 odd years has been extremely successful in finding a formula for success at Eurovision. It has resulted in three victories and nine other Top 5 positions since the inception of the touring version of Melodifestivalen in 2002. It has also resulted in people increasingly hating on Sweden for almost always sending such predictable, calculated, highly-polished entries, that some people call beige pop.
The songs have often been “written by committee”, ie. with a large number of songwriters at Mello writing camps. And the same songwriters keep coming back to Melodifestivalen year after year, many of the big names having several entries in each year’s competition.
The view has been that Sweden is never taking any risks to try out something different, something more original, and indeed something in Swedish. So now we have these outsiders from the neighbouring country, who were put together with Swedish songwriters (as the rules for participation in Melodifestivalen do require a Swede among the songwriters, but the artist can be from anywhere). The result is something fresh, combining the Finnish sensibilities and humour with the catchy Swedish pop-craft.
So now as Sweden is actually taking a risk and picking the feel-good favorites over the polished pop-guy, the Eurovision fandom is out in force giving their support and welcoming Sweden back to the frey. (Obviously not everybody, since the fandom can be rather toxic in defending their individual preferences.)
Sweden has been on top of the Eurovision odds table for most of the pre-season, mainly based on Sweden eventually picking Måns. But Sweden remains at number one after KAJ’s victory, so the people of Europe clearly approve.
The most popular one won
This may be stating the obvious, since this is a competition after all. But this trend was evident already after Heat 4 of Melodifestivalen, where both KAJ and Måns Zelmerlöw competed. They emerged as the top contenders, and while Måns was the one taking the first spot straight to the final, KAJ won the streaming war on Spotify and YouTube by having double the numbers Måns did. Heck, they even streamed more on that Sunday after Heat 4 than Loreen’s Tattoo did after her preliminary heat.
The KAJ hype was real and they kept creeping closer to Måns in the odds in the run-up to the final. The odds still favored Måns by a bit on the night of the final, because very few people believed the international juries would have been equally charmed by KAJ. But that was exactly what had happened. On the night the juries gave Måns just 2 points more than KAJ, at which point it was pretty clear the people’s favorite would go ahead and snatch that victory. And in turns out they actually got the biggest number of votes for any artist ever in Melodifestivalen history.
And what’s not to like here for the juries as well: the song is catchy and well-crafted (it even has a key-change, as a proper Eurovision song should), the guys do know how to sing, and the number was just a perfect concoction of so many things going on at the same time, everything perfectly executed so they made something rather complicated look so easy.
Making amends with Finland
The Finns and the Swedes always have a healthy rivalry in all kinds of fields, but especially in sports. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the classic World Ice Hockey Championships held in Sweden, where Finland beat home team Sweden by 4-1 in the final at Globen. The Finns still cherish the memory of that win and will be celebrating it at this year’s championships that are once again held in Stockholm. Some Finns have now compared KAJ winning at Melodifestivalen to this classic victory.
This sibling rivalry was also very evident in Eurovision 2023, when it was Finland’s Käärijä versus Sweden’s Loreen. Käärijä’s fun-filled and catchy entry made him the people’s champion winning the televote by a very large margin. But the jury favoured the polished pop perfection of Loreen and took her to victory. The Swedish public vote now going KAJ’s way is already seen by some as compensation for what transpired at ESC that time. The Finns are professing their support for Sweden and promising their 12 points in May.
Photos: Nina Uddin
