Lopez Blogs

It's just a few days left before the first semifinal of Eurovision-2011 and like every year Sweden is massively involved in this music celebration not only with its own representative Eric Saade who will perform "Popular" on the stage of Dusseldorf's Esprit Arena.
Third year in a row Anders Bagge's label works with Azerbaijani artists and the song "Running Scared" that will be performed by duo Eldar and Nigar/Ell & Niki is written by Stefan Örn, Sandra Bjurman and Iain Farguhanson. Backing singers behind Eldar and Nigar are also Swedish - Lisa Stadell, Åsa Engman and the most exciting - Jessica Marberger and Vera Prada from Shirley Angels will be singing behind them. Also right hand of Christer Björkman - Rennie Mirro is working on the show.
Another team with the only native artist and Swedish all the rest represents Russia. This year RedOne who hasn't managed to win Melodifestivalen with Love Generation has turned his head to the East and has provided song "Get You" to Alexey Vorobjov (Alex Sparrow), they've written it together with AJ Junior, Bilal "The Chief" and Eic Sanicola. Talking about the rest of the team it will be schlager-veteran Britta Bergström (you could see her behind many Melodifestivalen artists and on Idol), Henrik Rongedal (yes, one of Rongedal brothers!) and dancers Robert Malmborg, Filmon Michael (danced this year with Jenny Silver) and Daniel Koivunen (danced with Linda Bengtzing in 2008). Show is directed by Saсha Jean-Baptiste (she worked on Love Generation's show and danced with Linda Sundblad). Ex-Idol jury member Peter Swartling is Alexey's manager and Kishti Tomita (also ex-Idol-jury) works as vocal coach.
Song that will represent Slovakia has also got Swedish touch. Swedish singer Sandra Nordstrom has written track "I'm Still Alive" together with Bryan Todd and Branislav Jancich, it will be performed by TWiiNS. Finland will be also presented by Swedish-Finnish Paradise Oscar (Axel Ehnström) with the song "Da Da Dam".
But back to Eric Saade, probably it's the first time Swedish performance can be called technically really complicated because of exploding glass box and organizers have got really big problems with this trick. After the first rehearsal when glass couldn't get exploded it was decided to make another extra-rehearsal when it finally has managed but still during second planned rehearsal in the first run it wasn't once again. There are not so much time to work everything out but still team has 3 general rehearsals starting on Wednesday to provide confident performance in semifinal on Thursday, below you can check how Eric's show has changed since March.

By the way remember I told you about brilliant mashups made by DJ King Rollo for some Melodifestivalen songs? He's back with new mashup of Eric's song and Britney's "Hold It Against Me" and it's lovely!