Hikaruland Eurovision Preview

New York playright Hikaru Freeman writes a personal preview of the countries that are lucky(?) enough to make it directly into the final of the Eurovision Song contest. The Malta review:

Malta: Let me start a campaign for changing the expression "like a Greek tragedy" to "like a Maltese tragedy," because that's just what Malta has sent from 1992 until now (1996 being a slight exception: unintentionally funny instead of tragic). Yet they keep on coming back, like weeds. Somehow the deranged Maltese entry each year manages to attract enough voters to keep them from relegation. (From the articles, it seemed like Malta was on the brink of civil war when Lynn failed miserably in 2003.) So this year's tragedy is an old one with a new song. Namely, Chiara (the old tragedy from 1998) with her new song "Angel."

By the looks of the video, Chiara seems to have only made slight modifications in her outfit from back in Birmingham. Oh that says a lot about your confidence in this song, you're going to try to get people to vote for you just because you looked pretty back in 1998. Well lady, I didn't like your song then and I really don't like your song now. Anyway, despite being for a dire song, the video is pretty damn good. It's very reminiscent of the videos Ken Hirai has for his slow songs: lingering shots of people looking full of angst or deep in thought; landscapes; singer looking...well, angelic and all-knowing. Great video (although occasionally a bit too over-the-top with the symbolism), crap song that the Lloyd-Webber lot will just salivate over.

Read all the country previews from Hikaruland

Your daily Eurovision Centre and EurovisionMalta.com

The Malta entry on the official eurovision site

This German blogger predicts victory for Chiara