Mariette on Melodifestivalen Return, "A Million Years", and Artistry

Mariette first garnered attention from a wider international audience during her debut in the contest back in 2015 with her song "Don't Stop Believing". She even was tapped as one of the artists to appear in the large Melodifestivalen medley in the 2016 finals. But now she returns with a slightly more up-tempo, and significantly more cheerful entry called "A Million Years", complete with a visual shift from flowing black fabric in 2015 to all white outfits and bungee chords for her backup dancers in 2017.

"The first time, everything is new and it's such an intense week or four days, and it's a lot of preparations. You work for these three minutes on television for months. This time I feel a little more comfortable. I know what's gonna happen each day even though I'm constantly nervous."

After her 2015 participation, Mariette released a single entitled "My Revolution".

"'My Revolution' was the official song for Pride 2015 and [I'm] very honoured to have written it and I performed it at Stockholm Pride and that was amazing. It's about, everyone should do their revolution, whatever it is. If you're not happy with your job, just quit, or if you want to break up, you're not satisfied, just end it. Dare to be happy and do what you want. Do your own revolution."

Leading up to this latest competition, she released a new single called "Can't Kill My Vibe". As two years separate her entries, she has been able to evolve a new sound in "A Million Years" for her second time around. "It's a little bit different. The tempo is faster. It's a pop song but I love the melodies, I think they're really beautiful and it's catchy. The visual performance is gonna be so cool. I have a choreographer called Zain Odelstål and he's amazing. He was in the last time as well, 'Don't Stop Believing'. I was going, 'If I'm gonna do Melodifestivalen again, I want to have him as my choreographer. He had an idea of these bungee jumping [chords] and I was like, 'Yes!' Never seen that before. They've been working hard, rehearsing a lot in a big room, of course. It's much lighter than 'Don't Stop Believing'. It had a little mystical vibe over it, but powerful. This one is more, maybe direct in a way. The message is, 'A Million Years' is like the bond between people and the love between people, that the love is so strong that even if you're apart for any reason like someone hurting the other one, it's a relation, or your mom or dad or daughter, that love is so strong that you can never break the love. You will always find your way back to each other."

Despite having garnered international attention by participating in Melodifestivalen, Mariette has yet to push herself to be more active in appearing outside of Sweden. "I think I have to make myself a career and name here first in Sweden. Of course it's a dream to play in other countries out in Europe, meet all my fans out there. That's a dream and it's gonna happen."

When the subject is brought up, Mariette acknowledges the slow pace of the Swedish music industry. "I've been thinking about that. It takes a bit too long between every release. I've been writing songs, a lot of songs. It's just, you want to find the right way of doing it but I agree that we're pretty bad at keeping up with releases so I would want to be a lot better at that. If I listen to an artist, I want them to release songs."

Watch our full interview with Mariette here: