Jöback in Phantom

On this side of the Atlantic, it's rare to get the opportunity to see an Eurovision entrant live. The same goes for national final entrants. Though I've been fortunate to see a few, I've never seen a Melodifestivalen entrant. The only Swedish musician I've seen live until now was Robyn (twice!), who is far too cool and famous to even be spoken in the same breath as "Melodifestivalen."

Until now.

And so, from April until August, the hardcore Melodifestivalen fan may have strolled down 44th St past Mamma Mia (which they've probably seen before anyway) and into The Phantom of the Opera, where Peter Jöback played the lead role.

I went last week, in the final week of Jöback's run. Besides "Hollow" and some YouTube videos of the Swedish dub of Aladdin, I wasn't really familiar with much of his work. His voice sounded great, a little higher and more youthful than expected for the Phantom. He did a good job of playing the role of "stuck in the friendzone," as it's called today. The keyboards on the title song still sound straight out of 1986.


This isn't a Broadway performance, but close enough.