Malta are one of my favourite Eurovision participants - I look forward to hearing their always enjoyable entries each year.  The last few years have have seen highs and lows (and even bits in between!) for Malta.  They always have benifited from being able to use their native english in their entries throughout their career at Eurovision, but this doesn't matter, considering the free language rule has been introduced.  They saw a disappointing result in 1999 but bounced back in 2000, 2001 and topped their best ever in 2002 with 2nd place.  Unfortunately, 2003 saw a strange turn of fortunes when they finished one from the bottom.  Interestingly, in 2002, Latvia held 1st place, Malta took 2nd and the UK took 3rd, in 2003, UK were bottom, Malta were next up and then Latvia.  2004 saw Malta in the Semi Final, where they then qualified and gained directb entry to the 2005 Final.  The come-back of Chiara was a good move - she placed second, yet when Malta found themselves in the 2006 Final they sent another verteran, Fabrizio, but his poor vocal only mustered up 1 point and Malta find themselves in the 2007 Semi-Final.

 

 

After their poor (yet very just) placing last year, Malta find themselves in the Semi-Final, and as usual, will really need a great song if they want to make it into the Final (and who doesn’t!!)  After years of trying, and three consecutive second places in the Maltese National Final, Olivia Lewis finally gets the chance to represent her country, and will be singing ‘Vertigo’.  For most fans (including myself) vertigo really is one of the best songs in this years contest – it’s everything a Eurovision song should be – colourful, upbeat, catchy and fun.  However, I do fear Olivia may not be capable enough of giving this the vocal performance it needs on the night – and she also needs to make sure that horrible dress she wore in the National Final is forsaken and put where it belongs – a fire.  If Olivia really works on the vocal, she should be able to really lift the song from what I thought wasn’t the best live performance and a nice dress, with classy choreography could mean Malta could easily qualify – it’s certainly not a dead cert though, but I’m sure they’ll be in the top half of the Semi.  All in all, it’s a good tune, not a dead cert though, I just hope Mata can pull out all the stops with this.

 

 

Perfection is everything this year, and I don't think Olivia has what it takes to deliver a perfect performance.  On saying that, the song is a good one, and if she does pull it off, then Malta could very comfortably find themselves in the top ten.  I hope they do - this has everything a good eurovision entry should have - it just all depends on the performers capabilities.  If Malta do qualify, I think they can look at a sound top ten placing.

 

 

Olivia delivered the poor vocal just as I had expected and Malta haven't made it through.

 

 

One of the big disappointments of the night for many was the Maltese performance.  It just didn’t come together very well at all, and some might say that the 15 points this mustered up was still more than it deserved.  Olivia simply couldn’t reach the top notes, and tried painfully to make up for it by singing them falsetto rather than belting them out.  This, I fear, was the key factor that killed the Maltese chances: if the singer can’t sing the song you shouldn’t even be sending them in the first place.  It was just terrible.  The choreography was poor as well, using fans which didn’t even compare to the ones Portugal used.  All in all, a good song but a bad performance, so it was no surprise to see this fail to do well.  I always knew deep down when I was predicting that I was over estimating Malta’s chances, but like Cyprus I gave it a chance due to popularity among the fans.  Well I’ve learnt my lesson as predicting 12^th-14^th is a far cry from coming 25^th… wrong again!