The Wiwi Jury — our in-house team of music unprofessionals — is reviewing and rating the 37 competing songs in Eurovision 2024. Next we review Malta, who have chosen Sarah Bonnici with “Loop”.
Have we got the song on … loop? Read on to find out!
Sarah Bonnici – “Loop” (Malta Eurovision 2024)
Review: Sarah Bonnici – “Loop”
Ruxandra: A BOP! Sarah delivers a sexy performance that grabs everyone’s attention. She deserves praise for her natural dance moves and her ability to maintain excellent vocal control while dancing. The revamp of the song was a smart move, it highlights the best parts of the track. Sarah possesses a truly good voice, so it would be nice to see her more relaxed — during certain parts of the performance it seems like she’s exerting too much effort, forcing herself a bit too much. With numerous bops his year, Sarah’s performance could benefit greatly from changing the staging, adding something fresher and more innovative.
Score: 7.5
Pablo: Even if you don’t try to make the evident comparisons of years past, “Loop” feels like a half-baked attempt by a performer that doesn’t quite transmit the necessary energy to carry this kind of song. A dancey girl bop to party it up is always welcome, but unfortunately, this just feels desperate, as if they threw stuff to the wall and made something with both what stuck and what didn’t stick. Lyrically cliché, musically flat, and failing to convey what it wants, it’s a complete misfire for Malta, who needs to return back to the planning room ASAP.
Score: 1.5
Tomas: Sarah this year is bringing some “SloMo” vibes onto the Eurovision stage. That’s obviously the first association once you see the stage performance. The song is a great party starter, however, it took me a few listens to start enjoying it. Despite this, Sarah brings great energy on stage and I truly cannot wait for another amazing dance break in Malmö!
Score: 6
Simon: One of the many girly bops in this semi, and a surprise opener as well. The problem is that it will get compared to these other girl bops and probably fail a bit in that comparison, because it seems like a lot of good ideas were just mashed up without being more clear of what would work and what wouldn’t. It stands on the back of “SloMo” and “Unicorn” without executing it as well as they did, and for me there are too many clichés packed into those three minutes. I’m not sure this will better Malta’s poor qualifying record over the last few years in this semi filled with uptempo bops.
Score: 4
Malta Eurovision 2024 ranking
In the Eurovision 2024 Wiwi Jury, we have 17 jurors but only have room for four reviews. The remaining scores are below:
|
Antranig: 7 Cinan: 9 Deban: 6.5 Georgia: 2 Jonathan: 7 Lucy: 2.5 Ron: 5 |
Scarlett: 4.5 Sebastian: 7 Suzanne: 4 Tom: 6.5 William: 5 Youyou: 3 |
We have removed the highest and lowest scores prior to calculating the average. This is to remove outliers and potential bias. We have removed a low of 1.5 and a high of 9.
Wiwi Jury verdict: 5.17/10
What do you think of Malta’s Eurovision 2024 entry? Share your own score and review for Sarah Bonnici’s “Loop” below!
Pablo is inexcusably harsh. If Dua Lipa had released this song, he would eat it up.
1.5? he says that Malta needs to return to the planning room (whatever that means?), I think that wiwibloggs needs to kick him out of the team for this preposterous score.
Bad one
Bewsa would have been a better representation for Malta but at least we should be grateful they didn’t choose Banana.
I just don’t understand the hate for this song. It’s not a winner but it’s dynamic and it’s captivating. Musically and visually. Don’t understand how this is ranked lowest so far that’s insane to me
“Lyrically cliché” Oh please, I better see the same comment being said about Croatia because “Meow, meow, please meow back” is nothing better.
My mom doesn’t watch ESC, but after showing her the majority of this year’s entries she said Malta was her favorite.
It’s all been done before, nothing original. Malta had better entries than this that didn’t qualify so I can’t see this making the final
MALTA – They were the first country to open this season and entertain us with their lengthy (and often not very glossy) national selection. Loop was one of those I was rooting for, and when it won, especially over some less impactful or less sophisticated songs, I was happy. The time has passed, the song has been revamped, and now I have to assess the final product. It’s solid, actually. Clearly inspired by some previous ESC songs, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a copy. It has its own hook, and the chorus actually flows rather nicely. The lyrics are… Read more »
I don’t think most of us are being harsh. The point of the Wiwi Jury is to state our musical opinions and hopefully explain why we have those opinions. This song is last on my list. I feel sorry for Sarah Bonnici who is very likeable, and for the sexy male dancers, but they are not enough to save this song. Please let me try to explain why this song doesn’t work. The structure is unremarkable. The pompous beats are obviously designed to punctuate choreography moves, but there is little meaning behind that besides showing off. At least with Chanel… Read more »
Malta easily has worse entries. 2006 and 2011 come to mind right away. I am glad that you explained why this entry doesn’t work for so many people. It’s far from being my favorite, but I do have a soft spot for it more than most people do. Regarding “girlbops”, I’d put it above Cyprus and Georgia, but behind Italy and Azerbaijan. I am always glad to read your reviews. I’ll be posting mine soon, so you might see why some aspects that work for me just fine. I agree that it’s a musically good year. Especially in terms that… Read more »
*Italy and Luxembourg, obviously. I have no idea why did I write Azerbaijan. Lol
Haha
There were on my obvious qualifying options but Malta would have been more doomed had one of the cringe “joke entries” been picked. Sarah will NQ but I will not collapse with shock if she does make it.
*no
Hello re-named friend 🙂
Sadly this year I did not follow much of Malta’s National Finals, so I’m unaware if there were better options.
A very harsh and frankly undeserved score. Loop is a ton of fun, especially live on stage. I struggle to see how this sits significantly lower than Israel and Albania in the Wiwi Jury’s rankings.
I’m sorry, zero stars.
this is a very weak bop. the vocals are bad, the stage presence is almost there, the melody is botched… i can understand the dollar store chanel comments here.
Yes- it is one of the songs that does everything it can to distract us from the actual song and the singing.
Nothing special about this song although the remix helps but only slightly
Malta loves sending really basic sh!t lol
You can copy&paste various parts of already recognizable songs that have topped Eurovision but that doesn’t mean your song is going to work. “Loop” isn’t original and add little to nothing to the line-up, still it sounds better than other songs this year. With a little bit of self love one would try to avoid looking like a copycat of some other artists, and I’m not talking only about the song itself but also the choregraphy. I hope she reworks the concept and it stays at just an inspiration. 4.25/10 1. United Kingdom (7/10) 2. Australia (6.75/10) 3. Greece (6.75/10) 4. Azerbaijan (6.75/10) 5. Armenia… Read more »
36th place – Malta Sorry to say this but this is one of the worst songs this year. First of all, yet again another pop dance song, something we’ve seen too many times now. It sounds annoying, she dances more than she sings and when she does sing, her vocals are bad. She needs to do some really good training for Eurovision. It’s hard to dance and sing at the same time, but if you chose to participate with such song, then you should be able to do both well. I also don’t think this will qualify, especially when this… Read more »
‘something we’ve seen too many times now’ – hard to take such comment seriously when Croatia and the Netherlands are fan favourites after a hundred other entries like them in just the past 10 years (‘All animals are equal but some are more equal than others’).
Well said. You can throw Switzerland in there too.
I gotta agree that the song is very basic and sounds like a mix of other pop bangers
BUT
to be honest, Sarah had elevated the song with her presence and vocals. She really can sing and perform on stage. I was wowed by her charisma in the London pre-party.
It’s a nice opener but i don’t see Malta sneaking into the Top 10 of the public vote.
I love this song. Some of these jurors are never objective, they rank well generic songs, Sweden, Norway and Australia are among the countries that are favored year by year. With some countries Wiwi is very harsh and sharp, with others it is milder (Sweden, hello)
There are good generic songs and bad generic songs.
I dunno, there’s insane differences in production, choreography, staging and vocal ability with a generic song this year like Sweden and a generic song this year like Malta.
17) Malta – I admit it: I have a soft spot for this song. I’m not really a huge “girl bop” fan, but something about this one just works for me. Sarah has a decent voice and is a great dancer, and the song’s actually one I’m happy to listen to often. I have my doubts of it qualifying (considering last year….), but this was my favourite song from MESC and the revamp is one that works. 6.5/10
33TH PLACE: MALTA: The song is unfortunately fully outside my personal taste and I find it to be a very standard girl dance bop, with actually most of the song being an extended dance break rather than a song. I feel like it draws many parallel to previous ESC entries of this style that I never liked. Sarah performed it well at the national final, given the dancing she had to do, but I found it hard to get through the full 3 minutes of the song, as apart from everything else I mentioned, I also don’t find it particularly… Read more »
I enjoy this when it’s on. It’s geared itself to be the dance break song on the stage this year, and there always has to be one! I feel this could be elevated by the live staging, as the track isn’t too bad, maybe a bit done before. But by permutations there’s only a finite number of songs that can be written.
Score 5/10
0.0
pathetic nonsense cliché crap ”song”
more proof how ESC isn’t on similar levels as the normal non-esc music industries
Oh Anonymous91 you’re so harsh! Maybe the spin she does half way through will sway you??
well i mean maybe her billionaire daddy can bribe me into giving her a slightly higher score?
Sarah Bonnici – the real life veruca salt, Sarah in 2022: ooh what Chanel does with SloMo is great, Daddy i want a song like that too
and hence in 2024 Loop the Slomo clone was brought to life
Iran sent hundreds of UAVs and rockets at Israel last night!
One injured 7 years old kid (not even Jewish by the way, but they don’t care who they kill).
Will anyone care about Israel now? After years of warning from Iran!
On topic – Loop really grew on me actually. I like listening to it, but yea, can’t avoid the comparisons to Chanel mostly.
Funny to see the downvotes though, really shows how people “care” for all sides.
This barely even has anything to do with the current war – it’s just been the case with Iran for years.
Or maybe people don’t want to read about this on a website dedicated to Eurovision, under an article about Malta’s entry.
Well, people sure do love reading about it, but perhaps not under this particular article.
And yet, imagine downvoting it just because it’s unrelated.
I wish we could just ignore something like that, but we wanna live, you know.
The downvote on things unrelated is the people’s way of telling the poster to find a more appropriate venue to express those views.
I’d downvote it if they posted innocuous off-topic stuff – like which color towels are best.
who cares about Malta? no one
…*raises hand* I care about Malta…
The Maltese, probably
Lots of people. They have a very strategic geographical position.
We all know had it been someone else, writing a comment about the Israeli aggression, it would have had many upvotes.
You’re getting downvoted because no one wants to read about it on a review for Malta’s Eurovision entry.
I’m sure it would have had a different reaction if it hadn’t been me, or anyone else, talking about an attack on Israel.
I’m seeing so many posts about people celebrating the attack and being sad most of it was intercepted.
So while I understand, I’m here to raise awareness.
A proper response, in my opinion, would have been to neither upvote nor downvote.
Downvoting makes it seem people would love us to get hurt.
Roy, you don’t need to raise awareness for something that is dominating today’s news headlines.
most of us who comment on here want to talk Eurovision not politics. You only ever look to provoke and it always backfires losing you instead of gaining you sympathy.
Well, I’ve tried the nice way for years and it gained nothing… So why not just keep on talking about it? I mean, one unlucky moment and I would have been dead right now, the least is to show some sympathy. When there’s a new article about Israel in Eurovision, everyone’s jumping to comment about gen0cide and whatever, so that’s my little share of the Israeli POV. In the average Israeli eyes, we’re in one of the worst times of the country’s history and people barely care, or even blame us for it. Try to understand where we’re coming from.… Read more »
I actually find Iran to be one of the most problematic countries in the world, regarding human right of all sorts. I hope that everyone in Israel is okay. Sending you my best wishes. That said, I really hope that Israel doesn’t retaliate, as there are many innocent civilians in Iran too. And the last thing the world needs is another war. There’s been more than enough. We need peace!
PS. I like Loop too. More than most do, anyway. Just writing my review.
Thanks for the comment 🙂
Of course the Iranian people don’t deserve to die or anything, the targets should be military, but we can all expect a response back.
These countries see not responding as a weakness, they’ll think they can keep on attacking without consequences.
Ali daei is a daddy though whom had us all on loop during his glory years as footballer
I have Malta 4th! I would love to see Malta qualify for the final again and maybe snatch their 1st win! (Just my opinion)
Malta 2,5/12
5.17?!?? I’m sorry – what?!
35. Malta – Sarah Bonucci – Loop – 4/10 – sorry, not my thing, sadly this type of formulaic pop never fails to leave me bereft of feeling. There are a lot audible and visual cues to acts that have done this before, and slightly better. I appreciate Sarah’s fight in the live performances and hopefully we will get something visually spectacular which will take me out of the vacuous state that the track will inevitably put me in.
Scores so far:
All the results seem relatively low this year, which is also not surprising.
This year feels rather weak compared to others, especially the not too far 2021…
I don’t feel like there’s any remarkable or “iconic” song this year that we will remember for years, like we usually have every year, even a few each time.
Considering the downvotes and assuming they have nothing to do with my previous comments, I’ll clarify:
This year isn’t bad in my opinion, just not as strong as previous years.
I’m still enjoying most songs, but I guess people are passionate enough about this year 0.0
this year is the worst year so far, most entries are just melfest rejects lmao
Sweden owns the entire world, apart from our amazingly perfect Israel whom are just outslaying the whole line up by a long margin till the point it gets so embarrassing
Definitely better and less of a cliché repetitive dance track than Greece. Malta and Georgia will cancel Greece out.
I was a big fan of “Sirena” and was and I am still not happy with this song winning. But let me say a few positive things about Sarah and her performance. Sarah is an amazing performer and She kills the performance every time. She sounds good every time and is very fun in interviews. I love her energy in preparties and her and Baby Lasagna’s dance makes me laugh every time. I honestly would love her to qualify just to see her performance 2 times. People have been saying this is the worst song of the year, But let… Read more »