For years people have complained that there are simply too many songs in the Malta Eurovision Song Contest. So naturally Maltese broadcaster TVM has decided to go even bigger, expanding the contest from 22 songs last year to a whopping 40 in 2023.
And now the broadcaster has released 30-second snippets of all 40 competing songs. They’re packaged in 50-second videos (you’ll get to know the intro and outro music really well…almost as well as those iconic adverts for Mediterranean Bank). If you’ve got a spare 33 minutes, why not have a listen and then vote in our poll? But be warned: a snippet can really get your hopes up and in other instances totally underwhelm. But hey — it’s the holidays and we’re bored of watching all these Christmas and New Year’s re-runs!
Videos in the playlist below. The poll follows.
MESC 2023: Malta Eurovision Song Contest snippets
Aidan – “Reġina”
Andre – “Broken Hill”
Bradley Debono – “Black Out”
Brooke – “Checkmate”
The Busker – “Dance (Our Own Party)”
Clintess – “Lura Qatt”
Cheryl Balzan – “La La Land”
Chris Grech – “Indescribable”
Christian Arding – “Eku Ċar”
Dan – “It’ll Be Ok”
Dario – “Pawn in a Game”
Dario Bezzina – “Bridle Road”
Dominic and Anna – “Whatever the Wind May Blow”
Eliana Gomez Blanco – “Guess What”
Fabrizio Faniello – “Try To Be Better”
Francesca Sciberras – “Masquerade”
Geo Debono – “The Mirror”
Giada – “I Depend on You”
Greta Tude – “Sound of My Stilettos”
Haley – “Tik Tok”
Ian – “On My Own”
Jake – “Love You Like That”
James Louis – “Dream”
Jason Scerri – “Anything Can Happen”
Jessika – “Unapologetic”
John Galea – “Trailblazer”
Kirstie – “Girls Get Down”
Klinsmann – “Piranah”
Lyndsay – “Haunted”
Maria Christina – “Our Flame”
Maria Debono – “X’allegrija”
Marie Claire – “Thankful”
Mark Anthony Bartolo – “Tears”
Matt Blxck – “UP.”
Maxine Pace – “Alone”
Mike – “Leħen Fiċ-Ċpar”
Nathan – “Creeping Walls”
Ryan Hili – “In the Silence”
Stefan – “Heartbreaker”
Stefan – “What Do You Want?”
Which of the 40 Malta Eurovision Song Contest snippets is your favourite?
You can vote for as many snippets as you’d like, but you can only vote ONE time. Be sure to tick the box next to each act you want to support before pressing submit.
I’d like to here something in Maltese in ESC this year, there’s a lot of talk of diversity in todays world but language diversity is sadly lacking in ESC, with the majority of songs in English. Maltese is a unique language and brings something different to the table.
Either Aidan or Brooke for me
Wasting 40 songs and not one of em “wow” me.
But I do take Aidan and Brooke. Need to listen Kirsten full version sounds promising.
This selection recap probably suffers from a cheerleader effect which makes them all blend as awful. After a few recaps, it’s obvious that some aren’t that bad at all. Some even sound okay, I guess. However, among plenty of sub-par, and some even downright terrible ones, they don’t stand out. Also, I don’t think that anything sounds particularly great either. Some are nice, but that’s it. Maxine and Ryan could have gems if the choruses deliver, but that’s not confirmed yet. While they aren’t that bad compared to most of this line-up, I still think that Aidan and Brooke being… Read more »
These are painful to listen to. I see Fabrizio is still stuck in the 00’s. 😛
When does the poll end?
I don’t know.
Not gonna invest my time listening all these snippets while the song will be a melfest reject that is not included in the list.
The Busker – “Dance (Our Own Party)” sounds really good to me.
dario and john are probobally botting it
forty songs and not one good song, well no, maxine’s track sounds good, but still not amazing
Trailblazer is good
Maybe on Mars.
Not even there.
???
John Galea gets points for stylish looks, but not for that snippet. Still, easily among the less bland songs if you compare it to what Fabrizio Faniello, Mark Anthony Bartolo, Kristie, Matt Blxck, Andre, Ian, and a few others brought to the table.
Okay, maybe *bland* isn’t the right word for most of these. *Cringe*, that’s the word! 🙂
John galea has a good smooth hook
How can an English-speaking country have so many cringeworthy lyrics?! I actually prefer when the songs are in Maltese so at least I’m not bothered by the lyrical content of the songs.
I really appreciate that the broadcaster is investing and presenting Maltese songwriting talent…but we know what happened last year. So it seems like this contest is nothing more than an audition for a song we haven’t heard yet.
“I actually prefer when the songs are in Maltese so at least I’m not bothered by the lyrical content of the songs.”
Not sure about these from 2023, but Ritmu also had quite bad lyrics. Not understanding them sadly doesn’t erase their presence. MESC writers should step-up their game by ten steps as a whole, cause this is embarrassing.
Are you Maltese or did you run the lyrics through google Translate? Like I said in an earlier comment, Malta has no excuse for having songs with bad English lyrics, because English is one of their official languages.
There’s a translation available on websites. I use Google translate only if there’s none. 😉
And yes, Malta has no excuses for having bad English lyrics either. I have no idea what’s the thought process behind most of these MESC songs.
You expect bad English lyrics from countries where English is not a widely spoken language. It’s a little more forgivable when English is not their first language, and you can get some “so bad it’s good” entertainment out of it, but if English is one of your official languages, you don’t get that excuse.
I wish Mike comes first…?
John and Dario Bezzina do know they won’t qualify for the semifinal even though they tell their family and friends to vote for them in this poll right?
It’s pretty hilarious! I think we have all noticed this little poll voting game LOL Dario and John have been pretty busy clicking and chasing each other. Reason why I never take any notice of polls. I hope quality wins.
Why not?
Good luck
With these snippets, I like :
. Aidan
. Brooke
. Ryan Hili
. The Busker
. John Galea
. Haley
. Maxine Pace
. Mikhail
. Lyndsey
. Kirstie
. Eliana Gomez Blanco
Guys, the 12 hopefuls from Romania are also out now! Since 4 were out already, it wasn’t a hard task to go through them all.
After Malta these sound competent and professional. Good timing.
Well other than the presentation being pretty sad
Yeah, the video presentations are just pathetic. When I get the chance to actually listen to the songs in full, I’m not gonna watch the videos. I’ll just listen to them so I can judge the songs themselves. When a country under siege produces better music videos in the country of peace, you’ve really embarrassed yourself.
It would have been nice for them to at least turn the lights on for that first girl.
I had initially criticized Malta for their aesthetic presentation, but now I think it looks a lot better than Romania. At least it’s consistent.
In 2022 and 2023 Malta has had many songs but barely any the fandom thinks are decent. 62 songs, barely any people actually like. Using wiwibloggs polls from this year and last year, 5 songs in both years got more than 10%. Only 6. Aidan – Regina Aidan- Ritmu Emma Muscat – Out Of Sight Brooke – Checkmate Dario Bezzina – Bridle Road (I haven’t heard anything about it so maybe botted.) John Galea – Trailblazer Maybe its so strong and evenly divided? At least 23 so far have under 1%. Or maybe I’m too strict? If I make it… Read more »
I’m skipping this completely this year.
I’ll wait for the finalists.
Aidan has some great songs, Nahseb Fik is a personal favourite and I’d love to see him represent Malta with something similar – a Maltese-sounding song in Maltese!
Unfortunately, Aidan’s new entry doesn’t sound great, at all. He’s obviously dying to go to ESC, but I doubt we’ll see him represent Malta with Regina. If he wins MESC, which is looking unlikely, he needs to change his song. I hope he has a backup song in his drafts!
Looking unlikely, by whom? He has literally double the views of his only competitor brooke, and was the hottest topic on Twitter when the teaser came out. Why is it looking unlikely?
Malta always lacked support from the esc fandom and this is literally the first time (maybe besides Destiny) that Malta can get actual support in the tele.
Don’t you remember Aidan was the hottest topic on Twitter when Ritmu came out? He also had more views than Emma Muscat. This is just a repeat of last year.
I won’t be surprised if he doesn’t win, his song isn’t great this year.
Choose Aidan and change his song. To me it sounds like a hard try but not good enough if I have to be true to myself. And I was the biggest Ritmu fan ever! But Aidan is the one with the best look and the better vocals.
I agree, if Aidan wins (which isn’t looking too likely) then he should change his song.
The chorus of Regina doesn’t sound good at all. I really thought Aidan would’ve come back with his strongest song yet, but it seems like he’s just desperate to go to Eurovision and is producing quantity over quality. The random Spanish lyrics are just ridiculous too!
“Doesn’t sound good at all” – what sounds good then? It is the ONLY memorable tune I could sing from 40 songs – 40!
“Producing quantity over quality” what does that mean? He had 5 other songs last year – and this year he only wrote Regina from 40 songs. What’s your point there?
What’s random about Spanish lyrics? I read somewhere the song is about his mum and he is literally telling her she is the love of his life.
Id rather have Aidan over any melfest reject anytime.
Let’s be real, NONE of these songs sound good, including Aidan’s song.
Aidan is literally desperate to go to ESC. Instead of sending subpar songs like Regina to the MESC, he should take a year or 2 off and focus on writing a decent song that could actually do well at Eurovision. That’s what I mean by quality over quantity.
The random Spanish lines make no sense. It’s like Andrew Lambrou’s ”Electrify” (Australia Decides), the Spanish lines just made it cringeworthy.
It’s (stupid) trend to have some random Spanish lines in any song to make it sound ‘cool’…
I am torn there. I absolutely despise the very concept of changing songs after the selection (as well as revamping them to the point of being barely recognizable) because I find it unfair towards the singers, songwriters, juries, and televoters of the said competition, all of whom invested in competing entries potentially winning. I am still perplexed this flies in Malta without any scandal. Good for them, I guess, but I imagine a similar situation in Spain or Ukraine would have been a fiasco spreading through 12 Wiwi articles! That said, I can’t see many qualifiers in this batch. Maybe… Read more »
I agree Colin. To me Regina lacks a good chorus. It feels like he wanted to put so much in it it has gone out of hand. Too many sounds and too many languages. I was all for him last year, but this snippet did not leave much impact on me. The full version will probably sound even more confusing. But I hope I am wrong. I want to wait until all the songs are fully published before deciding. The ones that stand out for me are Maxine, Dario Bezzina, Brooke. Ryan has a good voice but it seems to… Read more »
it would be the ultimate irony if he got selected and then changed his song, maybe to one in english. i’m going to need eurofans to keep the same energy they had on hating emma muscat for changing her song!
Ha ha ha! You are right! That would be the ultimate irony. I am against any song changing. What I meant is that if Aidan wins with Regina, it would be good if he writes another song that has a stronger chorus if he goes to Liverpool.
he should’ve thought about it before submitting regina to mesc
I beg to differ re best look and vocals.
OK, Elenio, maybe the look, not vocals 🙂 But don’t forget that we want a good song too not just vocals
maybe neither lol
Now I have listened to all 40 snippets of the songs from the MESC 2023. Based on these snippets, I gather that most of the songs from this selection are very mediocre. However, there were, I think seven songs that seemed promising and that could be good or even great. But we’ll have to hear the songs in full to conclude that. Here are the seven songs that I’m looking forward to: Aidan – “Re?ina” Chris Grech – “Indescribable” Dario Bezzina – “Bridle Road” Eliana Gomez Blanco – “Guess What” Fabrizio Faniello – “Try To Be Better” Haley – “Tik… Read more »
Undoubtly is Aidan the best.
As someone who has just listened to all 40 snippets, I advise and strongly suggest: Just listen to Aidan and skip the rest lol
I’d like to say it again. There’s way too much. By the end i’m so tired i can’t rate each one fairly
I just listened to all these and while Aidan may have the best chance to get a result, none of these songs have any “punch” or hook to keep me interested.
I daresay that some of these make great chill songs especially at night but those are really unsuitable for Eurovision.
they were many hilarious ones, and hilarious is what i expect from malta’s selection. they just provide the unintentional comedy that’s the best form of entertainment for me. i don’t care if there’s no decent songs in the end, other countries will provide that haha
I feel like you and I are the only people here who knew exactly what this selection has to offer and are enjoying this dumpster fire burning while drinking Martini in the corner. Others seem surprised and upset that an obviously poor selection is obviously poor. 😉 As you say, there are around 20 other selections, and some will provide actual quality. MESC serves for another kind of entertainment.
40 songs. Potentially none of which will go to eurovision considering last years last minute swap.
Malta has some great vocalists but they really need to look elsewhere for songs as most of these lyrics are just rubbish. I think Aidan will win just cause people thought he was robbed last year and there is a lot of hype around him, but all of his songs are starting to sound the same to me. I would love Malta to qualify this year but I’m not so sure if this will be possible after listening to these snippets.
Not complete disaster, but I don’t think I found any snippet I would make me excited to add the full song to my playlist. Few are promising, but overall they’re just ok. But honestly I’m glad that I can’t catch, hear or understand the lyrics most of the time.
For now I’m most curious for full versions of Alone and In the Silence.
Tinfoil hat time: do you think Maltese delegation released the snippets and now are waiting for reactions, so they could pick the ones that are received well, so they could announce a shortlist before the show?
Malta, you do know it’s quality over quantity, and not the other way round, right?
1. Nathan
2. AIDAN
3. Brooke
4. The Bandit
Think John Galea’s Trailblazer stands the best chance – he’s half British and it’s in Liverpool – it’s a great song too
I didn’t want to but I was like eh screw it so I listened to all 40 snippets. Most of the songs just like last year sound like someone assigned a random word and the task was to make a song out of it in 10 minutes. The Busker’s “Dance” stood out to me as maybe being a very cringe yet catchy song that could kinda be likable maybe? Maxine has a lovely voice but from the snippet it sounds like a ballad. That’s kind of it. Regina is not good. Sorry but I really don’t want Aidan to win… Read more »
I agree. This is really random fabricated music with some random lyrics coming from Google search. Malta deserves better.
When will the full songs be released?
I honestly wished Aiden had saved Ritmu for this year it would have been an easy esc ticket
Lmao why are there 40 songs? And like none memorable…
Anyway the clear standouts are Aidan and Brooke, both would be good choices
Malta really needs to cut off more of the fat. A lot of these songs are not good.
In most cases, I prefer national final formats. But I personally think Malta has done much better when they produce their own song in-house. Both of Destiny’s songs and Micahelas’s song were superior to all of the songs in this national selection.
Unfortunately, I think it would take a miracle for Malta to choose something different for once. Malta has sent “woman with big voice” every single year from 2014-2022!!! And most Junior Eurovision years in there as well! I feel like they will choose Maxine Pace cause she is the most similar to what seems to win. And now that the semifinal is 100% televote, Malta needed to change things up now rather than later. Aidan is still my winner, even if the snippet of Regina isn’t as good as Ritmu was. Emma got to change her song after MESC last… Read more »
So many beautiful people lipsincing for life. I actually quite like the snippets. Good they made this intro section – otherwise all these power anthems and uptempo pop hits would begin to blend into each other.
The two rock songs caught my attention: Stefan’s “What do you want?” and Cheryl’s “La la land”
Unpopular (?) opinion: Malta is a country that has never sent anything really good to the contest, only generic/typical ESC stuff. That’s obviously not gonna change this year either.
I liked Tomorrow.
Even though it was kinda generic, I liked Walk On Water too. The rest? I could easily do without.
I LOVE Coming Home lol. It’s my 2014 winner. Besides that I don’t think I cared about any of Malta’s entries really? Not that I can recall ATM at least.
– 2007 was new for them, I like studio version a lot, but live performance/singing was bad
– 2013 is cool, deserved better
– 2015 they had masterpiece, but they revampd the song, it’s kinda the same song, but I don’t like it
– for the rest (from 2000- till now) I agree about your opinion
My top favorites from Malta include, chronologically:
I’d also add This Is the Night (2012), a big guilty pleasure, Coming Home (2014), very warm and nice, Je me casse (2021), overrated by the odds, but still a quality entry.
Not In A Woman’s Heart, 1996?
Gonna put a pin in three to listen to the full song and then another 5 just to snicker at.
Mediocre and faceless. Yikes.
As someone who would love to see Malta win ESC and know they would do a great job, the selections seem to be getting weaker. There’s no need for 40 songs.
The only ones that stand out for me are:
Aidan
Brooke
Lyndsey
Maxine Pace
Matt Black (not my thing but understand he’ll get votes)
With a catching group of:
Francesca
Giada
Stefan Galea
Mike
Maria Christina
Malta definitely likes to make things difficult. I really struggle to understand why they need up to 10 artists who look very similar, sound very similar and have a very similar song? There is always fun to be had though in Malta’s selection and I have no doubt that there will be some golden nuggets in the full songs. I am particularly keen to see how the chap who’s love is indescribable copes with having to fill three minutes – he had already run out of steam in the chorus. And I’m sure someone was singing about regulations and who… Read more »
There’s nuggets alright…don’t think they’re of the gold variety though.
Poetically put! 🙂 But yes, most of the “standouts” in this selection aren’t standing out for the reason of being a top ten material.
I have a feeling that my 20th in Malta will be rated lower than my 20th in Albania, and FiK had 14 songs less… 😉
Polite reminder; that “Melfest reject crap song” finished in front of Sweden in the jury voting as did Je Me Casse. In fairness, If I Were Sorry and Voices were crap of a superior nature respectively.
Those who had the patience or time to listen to all 40 songs… Not sure if I respect you or pity you.
It’s only snippets right now, but I did listen to all of them. That was an endurance ordeal wonderful songs are out, I do not plan to listen to every single one of them in full unless I’m really bored.
I’ve lost a lot of respect for myself listening to these!
I wonder if we’ll get an article about it soon on this site.
Raise your hand if you had endured the audio of listening to all of the snippets. (I did).
Ordeal.
I am only looking forward to listen to the full version of Bridle Road written by Charlie Mason.