MALTA [upd]

Back in January, Ira Losco was selected to represent Malta with the song “Chameleon”. Afterwards it was announced that the song choice would be looked at, possibly changed. It was revealed during the delegations meeting that the song had been changed. On March 17th the official video for the song was released. Ira will now be singing the song “Walk on water”

This is modern pop song with a dancy backing track. There is a very long introduction which leads into a slowed down version of the verse and suddenly sparks into life when the bridge kicks in. In essence, the song is very simple in terms of lyrics and song structure. All in all this is a very bad copy of Emilie Sande’s “Heaven”.This is better than Chameleon but only marginally but this also gives me some new reservations. The structure of the song is better and has a better hook. The lyrics are a bit simple and the chorus doesn’t make sense.

Ira Losco was runner up in Eurovision 2002 which kicked off her career in Malta. This fact alone as already made the Maltese participation an early fan favourite. After a 5 year hiatus, she came back to the music scene in 2013 with a new album and featured as a guest during the interval in the Maltese Eurovision selection process. Although not a stranger to ESC, the contest has changed a lot since then and one would hope that somebody of her experience would not be too fazed.

Visually the video is stunning and shows Gozo off in a fantastic fashion. The male dancer is a great addition as it gives the song a much needed quirkiness. Her dresses come of as quite drag queen-ish and I don’t think she looks flattering in any of them. There are few clues as too anything that might be mirrored in the staging. My major concern is that I don’t think she will be able to replicate this level of singing live. She is going to have to have some very good backing singers to help sell the gospel part which possibly means there will be no dancers. Unfortunately this song needs both - this song is going to look good and sound bad or look bad and sound good. This is a great radio tune but is going to flop live. It shouldn’t qualify but probably will, and if it does get to the final it will come in around the high teens.

ARTIST – Ira Losco
SONG – Walk on water
MUSIC – Lisa Desmond, Tim Larsson, Tobias Lundgren, Molly Pettersson-Hammar, Ira Losco
LYRICS – Lisa Desmond, Tim Larsson, Tobias Lundgren, Molly Pettersson-Hammar, Ira Losco