The Rivalries
The Male pop sensations
They are every fan girls wet dream and Christer would never think of putting them in the same SF. Nevertheless the Golden boys have taken quite different paths to this year's MF.
Danny began his career in Idol 2006, two years after Loreen and Darin made their debut and the year following an all time Idol high of Agnes, Sebastian, Mans, Sibel and Ola. He finished 6th and scored a minor hit covering Mello veteran Tommy Nilsson and followed up with a chart topping album. In the fall of 2007 he formed EMD with the two Idol 2007 participants Erik Segerstedt and Mattias Andréasson. EMD debuted in MF 2009 in the boy band EMD. In 2011 he returned to win Mello as a solo artist. He came a respectful second to his close friend and colleague Eric Saade. Danny’s rising pedigree as a solo artist made it difficult for him to juggle both acts and EMD decided to take a hiatus. Following the tragedy of 2012 Bjorkman somehow convinced a depressed Danny to take on the hosting job of Mello 2013. Danny was at the time very vocal of his mental troubles and uncomfortableness with the pressure of being a presenter for Sweden’s biggest TV-show. Nevertheless he put up a very solid performance alongside the stellar Gina Dirawi. All was not lost however, Danny managed to snag Molly Sandén and the power couple helped each other heal and over the next five years he built a career singing in Swedish. In 2019 he dumped Molly and came out as bisexual to no one's surprise. Danny has gradually been developing his fan base and is at this point one of the bigger artist in Swedish music industry.
It's a little known fact that Ewald debuted as a 15 yo background dancer in Velvet’s ‘The Queen’. He continued dancing professionally the following years and his wide grin can be in the dance break of Danny’s Amazing. In 2013 SVT needed a fresh face for the pop idol heartthrob. Ewald was launched as “the new Eric Saade” who even did his own choreography and dance routines. Ewald was determined to prove that wasn’t the case and made sure to outperform Saade in the dancing department. He had also shored up his vocals by having the credible John Lundvik backing him. Here’s where things started to go south however. By neglecting putting his mic in front of his face Ewald ruined the illusion of him actually singing and the killer bop of 2013 and had to go through AC to ultimately finish a disappointing 4th. In 2014 SVT again needed to fill the teen boy bop niche, snubbed John Lundvik and gave his song to Ewald. While Lundvik wasn’t thrilled about the arrangement Ewald boasted in the media that the song was written especially for him. This time Ewald was determined to show his vocal prowess by not overly relying on the backing singer, a direction proving to be ill advised when his finalen performance of Natural went down as one of the top 10 biggest fails in modern Melfest. That fiasco coupled with some other bad press temporarily killed off Ewald’s career and he had to resort to modelling while learning how to write and produce music. Ewald does however have a loyal fanbase and it’ll be interesting to see if he has improved his vocals since last time.
Saade debuted in MF 2010 as a total newcomer to Swedish TV-audiences. Nevertheless he already had some connection to the establishment. His longtime girlfriend Molly Sanden had both won Junior MF and competed in Mello the year before. A few years before he had been part of an assembled boy band with Robin Stjernberg. After having panic attacks from the pressure of juggling school and working as an artist the band kicked their manager, Saade chose to leave the band to continue collaborating with his manager and they continue to this day. He lost out to Bergendahl in 2010 and returned to win the next year. After cheating on Molly with one of his dancers the couple fell apart during 2012. After his friend picked her up Saade was not the most comfortable hanging out with the two and the media jumped on the occasion to blow it up as a major drama. His 2015 return was overshadowed by Mans winning ESC and he's been struggling to have the same kind of relevance since. The last few years Saade has has made a mildly successful detour to Swedish but has always planned to come back to English releases. It’s still a dream of his to win ESC and Mello 2021 being billed as a revenge match between Danny and Eric should work in his favor.