Cornelia Jakobs won Melodifestivalen on Saturday night! With a close competition against Anders Bagge who came in second place (with his song being “Bigger than the universe''), Cornelia’s song (“Hold me closer”) proved to be the best of the two. The plot thickens as I found out that Anders Bagge had most votes from the people, however still did not win against Cornelia. Anders Bagge is a well known music producer who was even a judge on the Swedish competition show Idol. Because of this fact, many judged based more from their hearts and based less from their ears. Bagge had a good song, however his song did not compare to the star quality of Cornelia Jakobs’ song. A fact that was further enforced by the international judges who helped decide the winner of melodifestivalen. As a result of the international judges' votes, Jakobs subsequently won against Bagge.
Cornelia Jakobs winning was, in a way, revenge against Anders Bagge. This is because she sang on Idol at the age of sixteen and was judged harshly by Bagge and even went so far as to say that he was rude to her. Now she has proven herself to be a true talent as she won against her alleged “harshest critic”. Anders Bagge has since then apologized for his rudeness towards Jakobs and she has accepted his apology stating that he was rude to her then, and has since then only been kind to her. Whether he is being genuine or not is up to you, nevertheless one cannot help but realize the irony to Saturday's events.
Now all we can do is wait till the 14th of May (the finals of Eurovision) to see whether Sweden will be able to claim another win in the European song contest or not. I have hope that Cornelias song can win Eurovision as it possesses, in my opinion, all of the qualities that a winning song should have. Regardless, only time will tell if we are to prevail or not.
By Oliver