Look, I’m not Swedish. I don’t speak Swedish. And I am very much not the intended target audience for Melodifestivalen, which is ultimately a Saturday night light entertainment programme for the Swedish people.
And by those standards, it makes perfect sense that Elov and Beny, who had over one million listens on Spotify last year, would get through to Andra Chansen with their song Raggen Gar. I couldn’t find an English translation (again, not the target audience here) so I had to run parts of it through Google. It’s apparently about finding a bride who’s cool enough to hang with the guys! (Insert the sequence from Gone Girl here absolutely eviscerating the notion of the ‘cool girl’ and the inherent misogyny behind it.)
There’s something about Elov and Beny’s Guy Fieri Divorced Dad energy that clearly resonates with Swedes in a way that an outsider like me does not understand. Fine.
But that doesn’t mean I need to be okay with Sweden paying the Queens of the Night absolute disrespect.
To recap: The 73 year old Ewa Roos and the 79 Eva Rydberg could be sitting back and enjoying retirement! But instead, they are getting up every day and putting in time in the rehearsal studio and probably going through gallons of Ben-Gay. Why?
I’ll tell you why. To bring us absolute joy like this:
This whole video is three minutes of pure dopamine: two glamorous older women wringing every last bit of life out of their time here, and doing it as best friends.
And while some Eurofans have complained that the song is rubbish, visually, it’s a gem. The producers managed to recreate the “let’s put on a show!” vibe of the Muppets, except in this case the Muppets happen to be two women who pull faces and funny dance moves.
This is Ewa and Ela’s second time round at Melfest in this, their renaissance years. I hope that it won’t be their last time at the festival. But most of all, I hope that when Beny and Elov are in their golden years, they aren’t ceremoniously devalued by the flavour of the Spotify moment.
dudepoints.fun 