Malta Ah Malta. Lovely lovely Malta. They love the Eurovision in Malta, and they love us. Every year without fail they give us 10 or 12 points, even when we enter rubbish like this.
In return we give them nul points and then send them thousands of gurning, thuggish holidaymakers to urinate against their beach bars and harass their daughters every summer.
It all used to be so different, largely because in the olden days when you had to sing in your own language, only us, Ireland and Malta were allowed to sing in English - so dumb Britain always gave 12 to Ireland and 10 to Malta, alternating in odd years. We even gave them points when they had the brass neck to enter this Japanese Vodka Just Dance song that sounds like a sort of nightcore version of the George Baker Selection’s Una paloma blanca. Spy 1 to Spy 4, I’ve deciphered the code.
Eventually it’s everyone’s turn, and after years of almost-theres, this year it looks like they’ve finally cracked it. Destiny is a former Junior Eurovision winner with a stunning voice (who also popped up on BGT in 2017), the song is brassy and energetic and does that on-trend thing where the build up to the chorus is bigger than the chorus itself and the lyrics and the performance are all gloriously feministy.
The press blurb says that early on in the process of preparing for the 2021 contest, Team Destiny decided they were on a mission to “deliver a dance floor filler” with an “instant feel good factor” - and “clap-back banger Je Me Casse was the result”. Clapbackbanger! It’s one of the few of this year’s blurbs that are bang on.
See you in Valletta in 2022.
