It was the most open Melodifestivalen in years, they said. Anything could happen, they said. And they weren’t wrong.

Since the current Melodifestivalen format was introduced in 2002, no song had ever come through the Andra Chansen round to take overall victory, despite strong performances by the likes of Shirley Clamp in 2004 and Caroline af Ugglas in 2009.

That all changed this year, though, as Robin Stjernberg stormed to victory with his song “You”, winning the jury vote and coming second with the televoters to take the overall title.

Saturday night’s grand final featured the welcome appearance of several former Swedish hosts – including Harald Treutiger, displaying more personality in three minutes than he managed in the whole of ESC 1992 – and a performance of “Främling” by Carola, decked out in golden hotpants and a cape. All perfectly normal.

As for the competition, the favourite with the bookmakers and the leaders on the download charts had been changing by the day, but Yohio with his “visual kei” look was still considered to be the most likely winner. Indeed, the Swedish public voted overwhelmingly for his song, “Heartbreak Hotel”, which sucked up one-fifth of the televotes – but having been voted down significantly by the international juries, that wasn’t enough for him to overcome Stjernberg at the top of the scoreboard.

Indeed, the votes of those international juries could politely be described as “all over the place” – but in the end it was Robin Stjernberg and Ulrik Munther who established a fairly comfortable lead over the opposition, making it highly likely that one of them would win the competition unless something very strange happened in the televote. And so it turned out!

At the time of writing this, Stjernberg is thoroughly speechless on the “Eftersnack” programme, and many viewers will no doubt feel the same. But the fact remains that “You” will go forward to represent the host nation in Malmö on Saturday May 18th. We wish him all the best – and make sure you keep reading esc-chat.com for the rest of our coverage from Stockholm, including the media reaction to Stjernberg’s victory, as well as the after-show parties and after-party hangovers!

We caught up with Robin at the Friends Arena earlier this week – watch our interview here: