There is still almost five months until the very first semi-final of the biggest Scandinavian national selection in the upcoming season, but the SVT already received 2295 applications for Melodifestivalen 2019, one of which will go on to represent Sweden at the Eurovision Song Contest 2019, which will take place in Tel Aviv, Israel.
SVT announced that the interest in the most Eurovision-look-a-like national selection is still above the standard levels, since they received almost 2300 applications, in terms to represent Sweden at the biggest music competition in the world. However, the amount of songs submitted for the next year’s Melodifestivalen were the lowest since three years ago – when they were looking for an entry for Vienna – when 2,177 songs were submitted to SVT. Just another explanation that quality wins over quantity – Sweden later that year actually won the Eurovision Song Contest with ‘Heroes’ by Måns Zelmerlöw.
In a few weeks time we can also expect all the confirmed contestants, but as much as SVT promised, there will be at least 10 songs, which will be sang in Swedish. So far the only artists, who’re a part of an upcoming contest’s line-up are The Lovers of Valdaro, selected as a winner from P4 Nästa – it’s still unknown what their entry is going to be.
Sweden already won six times since its debut in 1958. This years representative was Benjamin Ingrosso, who performed ‘Dance You Off’, he finished at 7th place.