[AdSense-B]
This Saturday, the third show from the Melodifestivalen will be aired from Vaxjo. 7 artists will compete in this heat and the duo Bella & Filipa will present their entry Crucified! We took the chance to speak to them about their entry which you can see below!
Hello Bella & Filipa!
First of all thank you for your time talking to us. How are you? Can you introduce yourselves? What can you tell us about yourselves?
Hi!
We’re doing great and we’re very excited to answer your questions!
We are 16 and 17 years old. We have been best friends since we were 4 years old and when we were 11 and 12 our parents fell in love and got married in the summer of 2015, one of the loveliest days of our lives. There are 7 children in our family, and Filippa is the oldest of us.
Filippa’s father is actually one of the songwriters for our act in Melodifestivalen and our whole family loves music! Although there are 9 family members we are very close and one of the things we can thank for that is music. We’ve both been singing as long as we can remember, but started writing songs and making covers together when we moved in together in 2012. We made a lot of videos on the app Videofy.me where we got up to 53,000 followers. Through the app we got the opportunity to meet and interview artists like The Vamps, R5, Miriam Bryant, Tori Kelly, and Lukas Graham.
When The Vamps had their concert here in Stockholm we also got the opportunity to sing one of their songs called “Can We Dance” with them before they entered the stage. In 2014 we signed an artist contract with Starlab, and have now also signed a licensing deal with Warner Music.
Besides the music, we also train Thai boxing twice a week in a small club where we are the youngest and the only girls, it’s really fun and nice when you have had a tough day in school.
Your song that you will be presenting for Melodifestivalen is “Crucified”. What can you tell us about the song?
Our song, Crucified, is about the feelings you can’t put down in words. We use a lot of metaphors to describe this indescribable love. It’s a song that makes you happy, cheers you up. It’s an uptempo song and it definitely puts a smile on your face. We both have personal connections to our song which is one of the reasons why we love it so much. It fits perfectly to an amazing night by the fireplace with your closest friends and family!
What was the inspiration for the song, and did you write it specifically for Melodifestivalen and Eurovision?
We actually got some inspiration from last years competitors, but no, the main idea with this song wasn’t Melodifestivalen in the beginning. We just felt a lot of things and tried to put words on our feelings in our cozy studio!
Sweden always managed to get good results in these last few years. What are you planning to do in order to win Melodifestivalen and eventually try to bring the Eurovision Song Contest back to Sweden?
First of all, we are just so happy and thankful for being able to be one of the 28 great acts in this show that we’ve been fans of since we were little kids. We just want everyone else to feel the love, compassion and happiness that we feel when we are on stage. We hope to spread our joy, and hopefully get people’s votes along with that. We want to show everyone how fun this is, and how we enjoy music and all the beautiful things that comes along with it. From the day we started making covers and singing together we’ve had a lot of fun and we’ve been doing our thing which we are going to continue with!
What is your impression of the Eurovision Song Contest in general? Do you watch it every year? What is your favourite entry?
YES, we watch it every year, we have both been big fans of this competition for many years. Our greatest memory from Eurovision that we can recall is when Loreen represented Sweden and won in 2012, we sang along with her amazing song and had a great time!
Apart from the Eurovision Song Contest, where would your dream performance be?
One of our goals is to be able to spread our music in America as well. Since our music has a lot of country influences it would be really fun to go to Nashville to write songs and perform. But the biggest dream of course, is to do a world tour! Our music is something new, even though we take inspirations from other talented artists we take it and make something special, modern!
Has being on TV made you more self-conscious?
Well, we have never performed live on TV before, so we’ll see after this! 😉
What advice you would give to your teenage selves?
Bella: We are only 16 and 17, so we are in the middle of the “teenage-things”, but if I would go back and give an advice to the younger me, I think that I would just tell me to not let shitty comments drag me down. You are great, remember that and remember to appreciate all the wonderful things that happens and all the amazing peope you have around you.
Filippa: I would definitely tell myself that comparing yourself to others only make you feel worse. There is always going to be someone who’s better than you in some ways but also the other way around. Be happy for all the beautiful things you’ve got in life and don’t waste time thinking of what others have that you don’t, just let their lives inspire you and not drag you down!
What’s the one thing that might surprise people about you?
The first thing that surprises people is that we are stepsisters and we’re best friends before our parents moved together.
Otherwise Filippa eats ice (a really strange addiction) and Bella is the first competitor in Melodifestivalen who was born in 2000!
What is a typical day like for you?
A typical day in our lives is that we wake up at home (Bella in good time and Filippa in the last few minutes before the bus leaves). Then we go to school together for a couple of hours. If we both have a long lunch break we go to the gym next to our school! After a day in school, we will buy something to eat (yes we are huge fans of food) and then take the train to the studio to record or write new songs together with our little dream-team. Then we go home, usually eating dinner at the train on our way because we’re starving, haha! When we get home we usually try to sit down and study for a while, and then just watch TV with the family or something.
