Melodifestivalen has become music's GDR.
Here artists are cultivated who are stars in the mellow bubble but who are completely lost in the competition of the real world.
Yes, I'm looking at you: Paul Rey, Wiktoria, Victor Crone, Mariette and more.
When it's spring for Mello, you're everywhere, but when it's the Grammys, P3 Gold, Way out west or So much better, you're swallowed up by the earth.
The contrast with the luxurious starting field in 1975, when tonight's hall of fame duo Svenne and Lotta competed, is sharper than Paul Rey's black and white doodle graphics.
Like a bittersweet boomerang back to the year when the super duo born out of Hepstars had to compete against stars like Ted Gärdestad and Björn Skifs.
Norman takes the turns
Lucky, then, that the Swedish people at least partially have the ability to sift the chaff from the wheat.
Marcus and Martinus may not be the Ted Gärdestad of our time, but at least they deliver a song and a performance that holds up for the world outside.
And Nordman's folk EDM is about as good as Melodifestivalen gets these days.
A real artist duo that takes the turns, we probably can't ask for more.
It's kitschy, dark and real all at the same time.
The rough meets the neighborly, says band member Mats Wester, without explaining in more detail which is which.
But crappy.
He has built his own nyckelharpa which he calls his electric guitar.
And after this crazy flight of the raven, I'm prepared to agree.
It's just a pity that it didn't make it directly to the final.
Spine shown
The Middle Managers should still be praised for having the backbone to keep the joke about the Koran-burner Rasmus Paludan despite the evening papers' attempts to create a storm in a teacup.
A joke that burns a little without being at the expense of the weak.
Laurell's song Sober, on the other hand, is probably closer to current contemporary satire than was intended.
Dancing teddy bears, childish singing and scenography in all the colors of the candy bag - it's actually quite impossible not to think of the forty-year-old woman in Finland who dressed up as a thirteen-year-old to play with the other children.