The 2021 Eurovision national final season drew to a close last night with the grand final of Melodifestivalen, Sweden‘s annual multi-week selection process. Christer Björkman surely wouldn’t have imagined such an unusual last year before bowing out as the MF supremo, but even with coronavirus restrictions in place, it was an entertaining and exciting final to cap a mixed bag of semi-finals with a huge variety in hosting styles.

Despite fan hopes of a tough competition with the likes of Eric Saade, Dotter and The Mamas in the mix (and our chat’s fave Clara Klingenström as a potential outsider), the writing was on the wall when Tusse’s “Voices” was already in the lead after the international juries had voted, as the 19-year-old was expected to be well positioned in the public vote. And so it proved – in absolute terms, he smashed the vote with top marks in all of the different age group categories. An overwhelming winner, and “Voices” will understandably be thought of among the potential victors in Rotterdam in May too.

Earlier in the week, Russia gave us an unexpected national final at short notice. The lack of clarity over proceedings led many to wonder whether the show – scheduled to run for one hour – was just a front to present last year’s representatives, Little Big, and their new single. But no! Little Big were present to hand over the crown instead, and three songs went into battle for the ticket to ESC, flanked by interval acts such as Filip Kirkorov performing a disco-fied version of his ESC 1995 entry “Kolybelnaya dlya vulkanu” (sadly not on YouTube yet, but we really hope that’s rectified soon!)

Appropriately enough on International Women’s Day, Manizha and her empowerment anthem “Russian Woman” ultimately took the victory – though not before we all had to wait for the news broadcast to end, after the first part of the show overran and was abruptly cut off. Glorious chaos, and a fine way to spend a couple of hours on a Monday evening.

Of course, the national final season is never really over as long as our SongHunt is in progress – the fourth and last semi-final launches tonight in the chat, and stay tuned to our website for the public poll in which everyone can vote!