Lizel Strömberg

Chit chatting with artists such as Dinah Nah, De Vet Du and Ace Wilder in Semi-final 1 of Melfest.
The ones that have been following my content or Jenevia's knows that last year when we were doing press coverage of Melodifestivalen, we had a hard time to get one-on-one interviews with the acts in the contest. We did semi-final 1 and the finals last year and all together we only got 6 interviews book beforehand. The other one-on-one interviews we had, got setup on set during the week that show was happening. 
 
This year, we had more experiences and knowledge about how people work in the industry so we knew that we had to really work to get the interviews we wanted. For semi-final 1 we were very lucky since we already knew a lot of the artists from before so it was much easier to setup an one-on-one interview with them. We actually got 6 out of 7 of the artists for one-on-one interviews, the only one we didn't get was Charlotte Perrelli. 
Our first interview for that week was with Dinah Nah who came back to the contest with her song "One more night". It was great to meet her again and to see her back in the contest. 
 
We talked with her about how she came up with her artist name, the narrative of her song and the girlpower in her performance. We also got to see her tattoos and hear her talk about them. Make sure to watch to the end to see her message to the international fans. 
Boris René is another returning artist in Melfest 2017, he competed with his new song "Her Kiss" which is made by the same songwriters as last year.
 
We went back in time to know more about his background in music and his fotball career. Hear Boris talk about his music influencer, what his biggest take away from participating in Melodifestivalen 2016 was and much more in our interview down below. 
To end our interview we did a game with Boris. Since Majo know Spanish and there's a lot of Latin fans of Melfest tuning in to see the contest we decided to do a Spanish word game. 
The game was that Boris got a couple words in Spanish that was related to Melodifestivalen somehow and he was going to read the word and then guess what they meant. The game turned out to fit Boris very well, a lot because of his energy! 
 
It was very fun to meet him properly this time because last year we only met him briefly at the press conferences and at the afterparty. He's such a funny guy that speads a lot of positivity and energy to everyone he meets. 
The dark horse of semi-final 1 became to be Nano which is a new artists for most of the audience. 
We talked about his background in music, the narrative of his song "Hold On" and more! 
 
He was very lowkey compared to the others and he has this mysterious vibe but he has more dept into his song and wants to put out his message for us to hear. Watch the interview in the clip below to get to know more about him. 
One of the debuting artists in this year's contest is Adrijana.
She was competiting with her song "Amare" which she also co-wrote.  
 
Adrijana is a new artist which released her first single only last year. In our interview you get introduce to Adrijana as a person and what kind of artist she wants to be. She's also talking about her song "Amare" and her insprations in music, style and for her performance. Hear all of that and more in the interview below!
I think all of us three got surprised over how confident and energetic Adrijana was. She had a very clear sight on her music and work. I think there's a lot of potential for Adrijana to become a bigger artists in Sweden, and who knows maybe an international artist as well?
The fan favorite Ace Wilder has returned!
She's back with her song "Wild Child" which is co-written by Peter Boström and Thomas G:son. We talked with her about her quick return to Melfest, her song getting released in Korea, fashion, what she thinks about doing collebration with Dinah Nah and the pressure she felt about competing last year. 
It's her third time in the contest and she saying she's much more relaxed this time and that she can enjoy it even more because of it.  
 
It's always a pleasure meeting Ace and she has this cool energy and she's such a professional. She has a lot of things going for her and I'm looking forward to see what else she has in store for us. 
Our last one-on-one interview was with the humor-group De Vet Du. 
This one was probably the interview we were looking forward the most. We've been liking their content for a while and as soon as we got to know they were going to compete in Melfest, we got very excited! Most of their stuff and interviews are in Swedish and since I'm the only one in our team that knows Swedish, I did a lot of research before the interviews. While doing research I noticed that many of the reporters don't really get their concept, they always get questions about why Dj Hunk never talks or wear shirts and basically not getting to talk about their work properly. 
There were a lot of ground work we had to do and go through a lot of things from the beginning to make sure we made a proper introduction of De Vet Du for people to see and to understand their work better. 
 
We talked with them about their concept fusion of comedy and club-pop, how they started of with music, their creative process of song-making and why they decided to enter Melfest despite not needing the exposure. We also got to hear more story behind their songs "Dansa som Kungen", "Klä av dig naken", "Panta mera" and "Shades inomhus".
I've said it before on my social medias, but I will say it again: The intro of this interview when Tor is waving into the camera is probably one of the funniest thing that happened that week. xD
 
The interview with the guys was probably the funniest one we made during that week. Loads of jokes together with questions to make a more clear picture of who they are as artists. We bonded very well with them and I think that shows in the video and our work.
 
To end our interview with De Vet Du, we decided to played the Spanish word game with them as well which you can see in our interview in the clip above. The video might be long but we are proud over our work and I think it's a funny and an easy-going interview worth watching. We even captured Dj Hunk smiling. ;)
I'm very happy we got all of these one-on-one interviews during the first two days because it made things easier, and we didn't had to stress about getting all of our footage at the press conferences which often are very hectic. It just made things much more easier and we could focus on other things. For example, I was able to get more photos and was able to get some video footage than compared to last year. 
 
I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the backstories for them. For those who have watched one, two or more interviews I hope you liked them and that you got a clear or a better view of the artists. 
 
More stories and photos will be published very soon. I'm working as fast as I can to sumbit blog posts for those who are waiting. Please give this post a like or leave a comment of what you think about the artists in this year's Melfest. 
 
Until next time, ingat!
/Lizel