Invincible: Carola's Third Act, Twenty-Three Years On

MAY 15 2006 · 12:05

Carola · "Invincible" · Sweden · 2006 Placement: 5th · Score: 170 · Language: English · Composers: Thomas G:son, Bobby Ljunggren, Henrik Wikström, Carola Häggkvist · Venue: OAKA Olympic Indoor Hall · Host: Athens, Greece · Type: performance innovation · Broadcast: HD On May 20, 2006, at the OAKA Olympic Indoor Hall in Athens, the Swedish singer Carola Häggkvist returned to the Eurovision stage for a third time. Her first appearance had been in 1983 at age sixteen, a third-place result with 'Främling'. Her second had been in 1991 in Rome, winning on a tiebreak over Amina with 'Fångad av en stormvind'. Fifteen years later, as a Swedish pop institution in her early forties, she returned with 'Invincible', a Thomas G:son-produced wind-machine ballad that she had co-written and that had won Melodifestivalen 2006 decisively. The Athens performance was maximalist even by Carola's standards: the singer in a white dress ripped away mid-performance to reveal a shorter black outfit, wind-machines blasting at full force through the final chorus. She finished fifth with 170 points. Within Sweden the result was widely read as a fan-service triumph — the canonical Swedish Eurovision singer delivering the canonical Swedish Eurovision performance. Context Eurovision 2006 was the year of Lordi's rock-metal breakthrough victory for Finland. Her 2006 return was widely reported as a deliberate Melodifestivalen campaign: she entered the national selection explicitly hoping for a third Eurovision attempt. Legacy Carola's 2006 is remembered as the definitive Swedish Eurovision fan-service performance — a singer whose résumé spanned twenty-three years of contest history returning to deliver a deliberately canonical version of the Swedish Eurovision ballad. Thomas G:son's subsequent Melodifestivalen and Eurovision career was already visibly underway in 2006. Mythology Carola's 2006 is sometimes remembered as a Swedish Eurovision disappointment; a fifth-place finish with 170 points was a solid mid-top result.