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Participant(s): Kurt Calleja
Song: This is the night
Writer(s) & Composer(s): Johan Jämtberg, Mikael Gunnerås & Kurt Calleja |
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Introduction
Every year Malta puts great effort in producing the national final called Malta Eurovision Song Contest. The winner is representing Malta in the ESC. Just imagine that on the small islands of Malta with approx. 316km² and inhabitants of 417.000 there is such a great creativity and music enthusiasm, which we can also see in other smaller countries like Iceland or Estonia. For Malta the Eurovision Song Contest is tremendously important and also very popular. It’s of highest importance to draw the worldwide audience’s attention to Malta’s music industry. The viewing figures for this show and the ESC are the highest of the entire year. The television viewers and the jury picked Kurt Calleja out of 16 competitors. It’s not the first time for him in the national final; he already participated several times in the Malta Eurovision Song Contest. “This is the night” is a modern, up-tempo song with a “good-mood-feeling”. In the battle of the tough semi finals, the song and the singer must stand out from the others. In the past years the original versions of the Maltese entries have been newly arranged to bring the music quality to an international level. Let’s hope that Malta will reach the final with this song again.
History
It’s going to be the 25th anniversary for Malta in the Eurovision Song Contest this year. Malta is mainly known for English ballads and pop songs. Malta always enjoyed the privilege of singing English as it is one of the official languages in Malta beside of Maltese. This has been more an advantage in the 90’s, as the new language rule is now allowing that every country can choose the language of preference. There have been many good Top 10 places in history, unfortunately, Malta has never won the contest so far, but there were two second places “7th Wonder” by Ira Losco in 2002 and “Angel” by Chiara in 2005; and two third places “Little Child” by Mary Spiteri in 1992 and “The one that I love” by Chiara in 1998. Furthermore there were one fifth, one sixth, two eighth, two ninth and two tenth places. Since 2004 Malta could reach the grand final only four times due to the fact that the semi finals have been introduced in that year.
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