Our Wiwi Jury continues its travel throughout Malta, reviewing the songs of Malta Eurovision Song Contest 2018. After enjoying some traditional Maltese timpana, our team of music un-professionals are ready to go on!
The next act for review is Tiziana, with her entry “First Time”. It’s not her first time at MESC, though. Tiziana previously finished 3rd in MESC 2010 with “Words are Not Enough”. Can she improve this time?
Tiziana — “First Time”
“First Time” Reviews:
Chris: “First Time” takes far too long to get going. To be honest, the customary life insurance advert preceding it is the most interesting thing in the first minute. Even when it does begin, there’s nothing really special here. Tiziana will presumably be a great live vocalist, but Malta should not rely solely on vocals.
Score: 4.5/10
Robyn: Tiziana has a wonderfully rich, warm tone to her voice, just perfect for delivering this sweet country love song. Though this performance is reminiscent of Claudia Faniello’s “Breathlessly”. That didn’t work for Malta in 2017 and it won’t work in 2018.
Score: 5.5/10
William: Her sense of “making it right” is sadly misplaced. This song lacks punch, power and memorability. It plods along, nodding to early 90s tracks long since forgotten, and never steers itself in a new direction. Worst of all it doesn’t give Tiziana a proper platform to share her strong voice. Wrong on every level.
Score: 4/10
Deban: “First Time” leads me to declare its the last time. Sounding like the score to an off-Broadway country musical, this song is boring at its best. Producers may have included this for variety, but everyone knows it won’t be advancing beyond its first national airing.
Score: 3/10
Barnabas: If Eurovision were held in Texas, “First Time” would be a song that the hosts would love. Unfortunately, in Malta, it’s hard to imagine that it would get many points. The melody and arrangement may be heartwarming, but its slow pace just ruins the song. In any case, it’s nice to see country entries from time to time.
Score: 5.5/10
Sebastian: There sadly isn’t too much to be said for “First Time”. A sleepy ballad that plods along, “First Time” is ironically not the first time we’ve heard such a song at MESC. Tiziana has strong vocals, but the song does nothing to showcase her range or raspy yet dulcet tones. Bonus points, however, for serving the most coherent lyrics at this year’s MESC. In every other way, however, “First Time” is a missed opportunity.
Score: 3.5/10
In our Malta Wiwi Jury, we have 17 jurors but only room for 6 reviews. The rest of our scores can be found below:
Angus: 3/10
Antranig: 6/10
Jonathan: 5.5/10
Luis: 3.5/10
Natalie: 5.5/10
Bernardo: 5/10
Rezo: 3/10
Josh: 5/10
Jordi: 4/10
Lukas: 4.5/10
Patrick: 5/10
Before calculating the average score, the highest and lowest scores are dropped. This is to remove outliers and reduce potential bias. We have removed a low of 3 and a high of 6.
WIWI JURY VERDICT: 4.47/10
What do you think of “First Time”? Are you willing to give it a second go? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
It sounds dated and it’s monotonous. I don’t like that sorry. Beautiful voice, though.
3/10
This is straight off a Shania Twain album, isn’t it? So undeniably simple. First the positives: Tiziana has a fantastic voice in the mid-range. It’s personally nice, because I can easily sing along to this song. The poetic lyrics are also quite nice and simple. Now the issues: The problem is, it’s just nice. “Just nice” won’t fill Eurovision’s 3 minutes. Comparing it to “Breathlessly” is interesting since that’s more of a requiem-type final album track, whereas “This Time” is an album-middling track. I like Tiziana, but I don’t love the song. 5/10
This is slow and plodding, even for a Maltese entry. Including these type of songs is scary considering that the Maltese public vote could actually go for something like this.
If this were a Disney song, would have got the Oscar. Eurovision is very competitive, don’t listen the haters.
The first time I played this song will be the last time I played it. It’s like someone slowed down the song to 50% speed
A 3/10
This song… exists. It’s not laughably bad like some others (minus her inability to use pause and stop to form a full sentence). Still, it’s kind of there. If a much stronger ballad, Breathlessly, got a 0 points from televoting, This Time would probably score a 0 as well, just by omission that it’s competing.
5/10 – basically as pleasant and as pedastrian as the Czech song “We Rule This World”.