Kristianstad, a very tiny Swedish town, which is completely new to the glitter of Europe’s biggest national selection, hosts this year’s second chance round. The entire town welcomed the competition with open arms with celebrations happening as far as the eye could see.
The Andra Chansen round is always an interesting week as you don’t know what is going to happen. We eagerly await for the results of the four semifinals but then it’s down to SVT to decide who will duel who. In my opinion, I do think SVT has a bit too much control over this, as you end up with potentially poor songs in the final based on the duel selections. This year is no exception, as SVT put the two strongest songs against each other.
The show starts off really strong and fun with a lip sync battle between our hosts, David Lindgren and FAB Freddie Svensson which gets Kristianstad Arena on its feet ready for the all important duels. SVT chose the battling duels as:
Duel 1 - Margaret “In My Cabana” Vs. Moncho “Cuba Libre”
Duel 2 - Renaida “All The Feels” Vs. Olivia Eliasson “Never Learn”
Duel 3 - Felix Sandman “Every Single Day” Vs. Mimi Werner “Songburning”
Duel 4 - Sigrid Bernson “Patrick Swayze” Vs. Mendez “Everyday”
The first duel is actually a good match up between 2 latin inspired songs. Margaret’s “In My Cabana” is a latin dance pop number fresh from her runner up 2016 Polish national final song “Cool Me Down”. Popularity wise Margaret is known all over Europe but her song is a childlike novelty one which even has a app game which accompanies it. Moncho on the hand is a rapper and a reggae band member which fairly unknown. Calling “Cuba Libre” a novelty song is like calling sugar a little sweet. It feels like it was written after too many Cube Libres. Not surprisingly Margaret won this duel.
In the second duel, Renaida gave us “All The Feels” with urban dance pop number. She exudes her hip divaness decked out in orange. Olivia unfortunately came across nervous and uncertain in her performance even with her dayglo dancers. Renaida easily wins this battle.
The third duel should of never happened. Both of these songs should of qualified from their semifinals. Why would you put them up against each other? Former boyband member, Felix sang his emotional ballad about not getting over a break up was simple yet beautifully performed. Mimi’s country pop “Songburning” was an exciting and instantly catchy tune but it wasn’t enough to over take Felix.
The last duel between Sigrid and Mendez was interesting. Sigrid, Swedish Dancing With The Stars Pro, gave us her Dirty Dancing tribute song which was fun but not strong enough to beat Mendez’s Everyday even though he had the worst vocal performance this year. Mendez has had many successful albums in Sweden, so his popularity and the fact that the song is good has overiden his pitchy vocals.
Here’s my video review:https://youtu.be/Xuyeu7M_1Go