Sweden hasn’t been very lucky in Eurovision Song Contest for the last couple of years, but this certainly changed this year when Sweden placed third, behind Azerbaijan and Italy. This is the best result since Charlotte Perrelli (former Nilsson) won in Jerusalem 1999.
After the final EuroVisionary were able to have a quick meeting with Christer Björkman, Sweden’s head of the delegation and Eric Saade. They were of course both thrilled that Sweden had such a good result in Eurovision Song Contest this year, “this feels like a victory” Eric says. I asked him how it feels that he got the best Swedish result since Charlotte Perrelli won in 1999. “It feels fantastic of course, then back in the 90´s we were able to fight for the top spots, now we are back there again”.
Due to the new way of presenting the votes the voting was more exciting than ever. It was nearly impossible to predict who was going to win since the scores among the top countries were very even. How did Eric feel after the show? “It feels really good, of course. I said during Melodifestivalen that the goal was not only to win Melodifestivalen but Eurovision Song Contest as well. This was a receipt of that Europe likes what I do and that I could have a successful career abroad. I wanna be the greatest artist in Sweden”.
Eric certainly felt the support from the audience in the arena “Something happened when we got on stage and did the first dancemoves. It was incredible to see the response from the audience. I probably lost my face in the camera but I don’t care, I just enjoyed the performance”.
Last year Sweden didn’t even qualify to the final in Eurovision Song Contest, and to prevent that from happening again SVT made several changes in Melodifestivalen this year. One of the big changes was that there were only international jury groups in the final. This was a way of trying to get a hunch of which song would do best in Eurovision Song Contest.
I asked Christer Björkman what it means to him that Sweden placed third. “It’s a receipt that the changes in Melodifestivalen were the right thing to do. This is a key to get a good result in Eurovision Song Contest. The foreign jury groups believed in Eric and thought that he would do well and then of course the Swedish viewers also wanted Eric to represent Sweden. This is as right as it can get”.
After the best Swedish result for years Christer Björkman said: “It has really been a wonderful night we have had so much fun in the greenroom. We got all the points we needed to stay in the top. This is one of the best Swedish results ever, we have won 4 times and then we have placed second once and then we’ve placed third a few times".
The Swedish delegation was of course well aware of the new system to announce votes and therefore didn’t really believe that they would win. “Due to the new way of announcing the votes we understood that we wouldn’t win, but we also knew that this would be the best Swedish result since forever. It’s fantastic!”
EuroVisionary would like to thank Eric Saade and Christer Björkman for their time.
