'Melodifestivalen 2018' kicks off in Sweden

In a spectacular show broadcast from the Friends Arena in Stockholm, hosted by Sarah Dawn Finer, Kodjo Akolor, Marika Karlsson and Popular former Eurovision entrant Eric Saade, Sweden chose their entry for the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest. It took four semi-finals and a second chance round held in a tour all around Sweden, to reach tonight's final, which was attended by some 30,000 people at the Friends Arena. After the votes of the international juries and the people of Sweden were put together, John Lundvik was the landslide winner in the televote and got top marks from every international jury. He will perform the Swedish entry Too Late For Love in the second Semi-Final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 on Thursday 16th of May in Tel Aviv! About John Lundvik John Lundvik was born in 1983 and raised in the town of Växjö, Sweden. Last year John participated at Melodifestivalen with the song My Turn which came third in the final of Melodifestivalen 2018. His music career really took off when he was one of the lyricists of the song When You Tell the World You're Mine which was played at the Swedish Crown Princess Victoria's wedding in 2010. Not only will he now represent his home country at the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest, but he has also co-written the United Kingdom's entry Bigger Than Us, to be performed by Michael Rice in Tel Aviv. John has a background in athletics, as a sprinter (100 meters), having won eight gold medals in national competitions. For the Olympic Games in Rio 2016, John wrote and performed the Swedish Olympic song All About the Games. His favorite Melodifestivalen is Carola's Evighet / Invincible from 2006. To perform Too Late For Love, John was joined on stage by a gospel choir made up of Paris Renita, Loulou Lamotte, Ashley Haynes and Dinah Yonas Manna. Too Late For Love is co-written by John Lundvik, Anderz Wrethov and Andreas ”Stone” Johansson. John says "The title says Too Late For Love, but what I want to say that it's really never too late for love. I dare to believe somewhere, in my naive heart, that everything can be solved with love". The Melodifestivalen final The show opened with last year's top 2; Felix Sandman and Benjamin Ingrosso proving that there are no hard feelings about the results in the competition. Then. the presenters and the competing artists were introduced as they arrived to Friends Arena in the Melodifestivalen 2019 van while Lionel Richie's All Night Long was performed by last year's winner Benjamin Ingrosso. These were tonight's finalists (winner in bold): Jon Henrik Fjällgren - Norrsken (Goeksegh / Northern Lights) Lisa Ajax - Torn Mohombi - Hello Lina Hedlund - Victorious Bishara - On My Own Anna Bergendahl - Ashes to Ashes Nano - Chasing Rivers Hanna Ferm & LIAMOO - Hold You Malou Prytz - I Do Me John Lundvik - Too Late For Love Wiktoria - Not With Me Arvingarna - I Do The first interval act featured a remix of last year's winner, Benjamin Ingrosso's Dance You Off with a performance of the Melodifestivalen 2019 dancers. Afterwards the international juries from eight countries provided their scores, which counted for 50% of the results. This year's juries came from: Portugal, Austria, Australia, Cyprus, France, Finland, United Kingdom and Israel and all of them handed the maximum 12 points wo John Lundvik's Too Late For Love. While the audience was given some time to react on the results of the jury, two of Eurovision's former winners were next on stage, Sweden's Charlotte Perrelli, winner of the last Eurovision Song Contest held in Israel in 1999 with Take Me To Your Heaven and Israel's Diva herself, Dana International. They each performed a clip of their own winning songs before duetting on Diva To Diva, a song written for them to perform in the show. Then the four hosts sang a final song, Snart är ljuset släckt before the televoting results were announced. The Swedish public voted massively (more than 15 million votes were cast) for the finalists, and John Lundvik was the winner. Melodifestivalen 2019 results © SVT Sweden in Eurovision Sweden made its debut in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1958 and is currently second on the all time Eurovision leaderboard with six victories. The country is known for the most successful Eurovision winners ever, ABBA, which was the first of Sweden’s victories in the competition. Sweden is one of the most successful countries in the Eurovision Song Contest with six victories to date, coming second behind Ireland's record-breaking seven wins. Sweden has been in the top five countries in four of the last five contests and won twice recently, in 2012 and 2015. What do you think of John Lundvik as Sweden's choice for the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest? Comment below!

'Melodifestivalen 2018' kicks off in Sweden

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