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MALTA 2002 |
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| We've come a long way together, Eurovision and the
Maltese. We've made it through year after year of dreary ballads
with lyrics that could have been lifted straight from Janet and John
Write Love Songs and costumes that Laura Ashley would have stopped
selling in round about 1979 (or that Top Shop would have stopped selling
in 1989, if we're talking Miriam Christine). All of a sudden, someone seems to have reminded PBS that they are, in fact, situated on a small Mediterranean island, and that all the effort they've expended over the last decade in dreaming up new locations around the country which can be plastered with an Air Malta logo might in fact be better expended in showing hundreds of millions of preview-video viewers why they should get on the Air Malta plane in the first place. The answer? So that they can come and see Latino Pop Idol. After three songs by Gilda Giuliani, a several-times San Remo veteran who provokes splutters of 'They don't make 'em like that any more' from the internet eavesdroppers (including myself, who was spluttering as loudly as anyone), the preview of the sixteen songs in the Maltese final is kicked off with a rattle of castanets in the first bar of Think of you, and Nadine Axisa has at once signalled her intention to continue the new Maltese formula: if it sounds vaguely Spanish and could plausibly have a preview featuring Young Beautiful People lazing around on a yacht, it's in. Time it right and she could end up in Tallinn just as Shakira crosses over, which will give the Maltese the chance to host the ESC they've been angling for for years. Lawrence Gray is another of the singers with two songs in the final, although this is an improvement on earlier years - one year Ira Losco had four. Cue a Spanish guitar again, and three minutes of Lawrence pulling faces all through What happened to our love? This one also contains the line 'What happened to our song?', so if anyone was in the wings and overheard the songwriters discussing their boy's performance, maybe they were just so carried away that they were singing along with him. Then again, maybe not. Miss the first line in Theresa and you might be left wondering what on earth the poor girl has to do with Karl Spiteri and Andreana Debattista's song, and why it isn't called 'Run away' (because then the Corrs would sue? Andreana's even as near as borrowed one of their names...). For the perplexed, Theresa was some girl that Karl and Andreana are purporting to have been at school with. Rather mischievously, I'm waiting for a Theresa to come forward and say that yes, they were, and furthermore, they were the ones who flushed her satchel down the lavatory one afternoon after geography class. Had this one won, Malta are performing so near the end that Estonia's Sahlene could have chalked a good few sixes and eights up on the scoreboard before she'd even begun. Up next is the aforementioned Ira Losco, who must now be approaching Ralph Siegel's record for national finals appearances despite him being old enough to be her father. One step away is another in the emerging genre of Britney-Spears-a-likes, following Ms S's producer Max Martin's number one rule that anything can be Britneyfied if you make sure to interrupt every line of the chorus at least once with a little noise you cooked up on your laptop five minutes ago. Though I can live with that. And didn't Malina Olinescu have a dress like that? Back to Lawrence Gray again for Moment of truth - it's even starting to sound like Pop Idol now... and with an introduction as Westlife-inspired as this one, all Lawrence needs is the pyramidical hair to do a very passable Gareth Gates. The rather fetching, if you're that way inclined, Gunther Chetcuti - and how a Malteser ends up with a name like Gunther, I'm still not sure - performs Wanna hold you, a cheap Eurodance number with a promising introduction that could end after 60 seconds and nobody would be any the wiser. ONE are performing in the interval act tomorrow, Gunther. If you want to pull off an All About Eve, impress them and get taken on as their understudy, it's no good trying tonight. Give me wings, by Olivia Lewis, was a missed opportunity for the Maltese: if you're going to be that kitsch in the first place, you might as well go all the way. It's a little like something out of Flashdance, but after starting out like that, there'd have been no reason not to push on for the holy grail of Challenging Nuša Derenda. As it is, someone's thoughts had been running closely enough in that direction to give her Ruth Jacott's hair and dress her in a 1970s sci-fi outfit complete with collar. At the end of the song, you know, they're beaming her back up again. On to Julie Zahra who has a Secret to share. Can anyone guess what it might be? That's right - she always wanted to be in Melodifestivalen, but Air Malta don't fly direct to Stockholm any more. There's rather a lot of Carola in this one, not to mention the incessant jingly bells which could have been purloined straight out of Mariah Carey's All I want for Christmas is you. Another Britney Spears introduction, which reveals itself as so obviously I'm a slave to you that it is surely too blatant a copy even for Eurovision. For once, however, no pretence is involved: this is in fact an honest-to-God Britney impersonator, which makes a change from slipping them into the finals a la Ira Losco, Vesna Pisarovic, Ines, Alsou, Tanisha, And So The List Goes On. She's followed by pictures of Estonian waterfalls, Estonian villages, and back to the waterfalls again, to the accompaniment of a choral melody which may, or may not, be an Estonian Christmas carol. Just as that buzzing sound may, or may not, be an Estonian didgeridoo. There are so many aerial shots - 'Look at that pretty church' - that the travelogue was probably shot out of the window of an Air Malta plane: 'The emergency waterfalls are located to your left and right.' We are returned to the studio, where a guitarist picks away at three songs which are something to do with Enrique Iglesias. It has now been over an hour since any Maltese finalist was heard, and I can't imagine that it's because it took the presenter that long to change her dress. Or even to get Fiona Cauchi's motorcycle on stage. Don't ask me what it has to do with Hide and seek, but I'm sure you'll never fit one of those into the Saku Suurhall, and she doesn't look quite enough of a rock chick to go storming on to the stage with it. It would have to be Malta making trouble - first Chiara's candles and now this.... To the relief of the Estonian Scene-Shifters' Guild, however, Fiona hasn't got a hope, and it's over to Paula with Dazzle me. 'Dazzle me with big blue eyes' - and how is he, since I'm presuming (unfortunately) that he's a he - meant to do that? Unless what she's actually talking to is a police car. I can imagine this being a very agreeable Scandinavian entry, although in that case they probably wouldn't have found such an agreeable Mediterranean to sing it, so on balance, let's leave things how they are. The first few bars of A new day is dawning suggest, for one awful moment, that we've got the Britney impersonator back and there will be another hour, travelogue and all, before they pick up where they left off, but it is in fact none other than Annalise Ellul, proving that no matter how much you disguise it with slick Scandinavian-style production, there is a little corner of the lyrics sheet that is forever Malta. 'A new day is dawning/And the earth is calling...' Old habits die hard. Thanks in no small part to the marathon interval, my attention has unfortunately flagged by the time we reach the eventual winner, Ira Losco again with Seventh wonder. It does occur to me that at least some of the voters might have gone for this one in the belief it was One step away - after all, Britney is rather more This Year than B*Witched are, so it's a shame that this song's chorus has got me filling in the 'Say you will, say you won't' moment from C'est la vie. Another singer who was better the first time round is Nadine Axisa, trying again with Romantic, an unmemorable uptempo song chiefly memorable for the unintended diversion of How Long Before That Thing Comes Off Her Shoulder. The Thing in question is what Dionyssia from Thalassa would have worn if she had suddenly been struck down in Birmingham with an attack of Pastels. When I'm near, by Roger Tirazona, is a ballad thoroughly out of character with the rest of the songs but which might have had a chance if he'd entered it ten years before. Except that by the looks of him he'd only have been about six years old. Karen Polidano, too, has turned up several years too late: When comes my lover is crying out to be plaintively chanted in a Highland glen, Irish moor or gothic Celtic location of your choice, and would have fitted in perfectly with the rest of the line-up if she'd taken it to Oslo 1996. (Ireland, Norway, Sweden, France, Croatia to an extent and Malta is a combination you're probably never going to see outside Eurovision, or even in it.) Fiona Cauchi gets to finish off with Heaven in my life, and why she has two songs in the final, let alone one, is beyond me - although by this point it is a case of waiting patiently for Laura Voutilainen and not paying very much attention to anything else. Laura arrives in exactly the same white dress - imagine a nurse's uniform with the watch taken off and several bits cut out of the front - that she wore in Euroviisut and delivers an accomplished Addicted to you, which I realise is So Anastacia It's Not True. But we may nonetheless have another Eurovision Trend on our hands, in which case any Maltese viewers with widescreen televisions may have noticed some of the ultimately unsuccessful songwriters taking notes when they thought the camera was pointing the other way..... |
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