Wearing Long Underbar: The Melody Festival

A perennial Swedish television event is the Melody Festival (Melodifestivalen). It is a six part live television event where a wide range of individual singers and bands compete to win the title of best song. The contestants play their songs live on the air and are voted on over the phone by the viewers at home, similar to how people vote for American Idol in the US.

The quality of the contestants range from un-listenable to sad to great, and the types of music is on a spectrum from dance pop to singer-songwriter to rock power ballads. The lyrics are mostly in English (because they want to eventually compete on a world stage) but about a quarter of the songs are in Swedish.

The absolute worst song was "Give Me a Spaniard" ("Ge mig en spanjor"):

Since the beginning of the event five weeks ago, we have watched most of the shows at our friends' houses, which makes the bad singers bearable and even funny. At first, we watched it purely as a way to observe a Swedish cultural event, but I have to admit that now I actually am looking forward to the finale next weekend.

Who's going to win? I am rooting for The Moniker, who is completely weird and silly, which is why I like it: