SVT are continuing to reveal artists who are being inducted into the Melodifestivalen Hall of Fame with After Dark, Ingela Forsman and Sarah Dawn Finer being the next to join. After Dark, the drag act sensation performed by Christer Lindarw is best know to Mello viewers for their 3rd place result with “La dolce vita” in 2004, finishing behind fellow Hall of Fame inductee Lena Philipsson.
Several other Melodifestivalen appearances followed and After Dark continued to tour Sweden until Christer Lindarw decided to retire the act in 2018. Christer now continues to perform under his own name as well as his very successful clothing designer career.
Ingela Forsman is one of Melodifestivalen’s most prolific artists with a huge 38 contributions both as an artist herself and as a songwriter. She has won the competition three times as a writer, first with Kikki Danielsson’s ” Bra vibrationer” in 1985 which went on to achieve 3rd place in the Eurovision Song Contest. In the 1990’s Ingela managed to win the Melodifestivalen competition twice more with “Se på mej” in 1995 and “Kärleken är”, performed by Jan Johansen and Jill Johnson respectively. It is for these wonderful achievements that Ingela is a well deserved member of the Hall of Fame.
Our other latest inductee is the multi-talented presenter, actress and singer Sarah Dawn Finer! Sarah has participated as a performer in Melodifestivalen twice both in 2007 with “I Remember Love” and in 2009 with “Moving On”, achieving 4th and 6th places in the final respectively.
In addition to this Sarah has taken part in other areas of Melodifestivalen several times, first hosting the contest in 2012 along with Helena Bergström and Gina Dirawi. It was in the final of this show that we were introduced to the character of “Lynda Woodruff” which due to huge positive feedback went on to feature during the voting results of the 2012 Eurovision Grand Final where “Lynda” gave out the points from Sweden!
The character of Lynda continued to grow and three comedy sketches featured at the 2013 contest in Malmö, before Sarah as herself took to the stage to perform a beautiful rendition of ABBA’s “The Winner Takes It All”. Further appearances as “Lynda Woodruff” featured at the Eurovision Greatest Hits Concert in London in 2014, and again at the Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm in 2016.
Sarah returned to the Melodifestivalen hosting spotlight both in 2016 with Gina Dirawi, and in 2019 hosting all 6 shows alongside the team of Eric Saade, Marika Carlsson and Kodjo Akolor.
After Dark, Sarah Dawn Finer and Ingela Forsman join the already growing list of members of the Hall of Fame, including the six Swedish Eurovision winners ABBA, Herreys, Carola, Charlotte Perrelli, Loreen and Måns Zelmerlöw, the first ever Swedish representative; Alice Babs. As well as more recent announcements Nanne Grönvall and Lena Philipsson.
Who would you like to see inducted into the Melodifestivalen Hall of Fame, let us know on our socials!
