The Maltese act and song was chosen on February 3rd through their national final "Malta Eurovision Song Contest". Back in October and November, a number of semi-finals were held with nine acts performing in each show. The most voted for 12 songs were selected as finalists. The final was preceded by the premiere of the finalists' music videos. The winner was calculated by adding a jury score with (7/9 weighting) to the televote score (with 2/7 weight) Going to Malmö is Sarah Bonnici performing the song "Loop".
Bonnici is from the island of Gozo. Her father is Marcel Bonnici, CEO of Mercury Towers (Malta's tallest building) and owner of football club Ħamrun Spartans the reigning Maltese Premier League champions). Aged 11, Sarah competed in the Maltese national selection for the Junior Eurovision Song Contest and finished a credible in third place. The following year, she won her age group category of the L-Għanja Tal-Maltin Song Festival, competing with a song written by former Eurovision competitor, Miriam Christine . She also returned to the Junior Eurovision selection show but came 7th but still did go the jESC that year as a backing dancer for Nicole Azzopardi. Bonnici participated in Malta Eurovision Song Contest 2022 with "Heaven" placing 12th in the final.
During the national final live performance, Sarah was wearing what seems to be this year's Eurovision uniform - a black cutaway mesh catsuit! She is joined in the studio by 4 male dancers who are also wearing black tops with an illusion neckline, which is extremely off-putting. The stage is also predominately black with some pink/purple strobes of light throughout. With everybody wearing black, it is sometimes hard to see where everyone is! Sarah starts on her own with some soulful vocal gymnastics before going into the verse and chorus followed by a shortened second verse and full chorus. Up to this point Sarah had been dancing while singing, but here there is a long pause for more involved dancing. There is then a brief stop for vocal gymnastics finishing the song with a final chorus and a last second dance break. Sarah's vocal is not bad considering how much work she is doing on stage, is maintained throughout although at times you can hear her stopping to catch her breath.
This is an extremely full-on entry with many strengths. Sarah, as I have already stated, has a clear voice and she moves well on the stage. However on a very simplistic level many will see the show as heavily derivative of Chanel's "SloMo" and Noa's "Unicorn". One may even say this is a weaker entry compared to both of these but this may be due more to technical details than any lack of promise and talent. There are two main things I feel they need to work on to get the impact right. First one is to properly highlight the name of the song. The title is lost in the mix and either needs to be audibly louder or the words prominent on the stage. It would help is Sarah sang the word rather than just being on the backing vocals. Secondly they need to revamp the staging because it is too dark and gloomy. There was so much dancing that could not be appreciated properly because of the bad lighting and the poor camera angles. The gimmick of the blindfolded flip is honestly not worth it; the time taken to set it up was not worth the pay off. It would be nice to have something a lot more colourful as this is a great fun dance tune. The video clip that went along with the song was very dynamic -full of snappy camera changes and swooping shots - if only they could create such power on a static stage. This is definitely a Eurovision song for the modern age and might provide a bit of familiar relief amongst the niche entries.
ARTIST - Sarah Bonnici
SONG - Loop
WRITING/PRODUCTION CREDITS - Leire Gotxi Angel, Sarah Bonnici, Michael Joe Cini, Kevin Lee, Sebastian Pritchard-James
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