Claudia Faniello will finally represent Malta in Eurovision
2017 is a big year for Claudia Faniello. It took her nine attempts, but she finally won the Maltese national final for the Eurovision Song Contest and will represent her country at Europe’s biggest televised music competition. Claudia, who is the younger sister of Fabrizio Faniello, who already represented Malta twice, was chosen to fly the flag for Malta with the traditional ballad ‘Breathlessly’. Will she be able to bring a good result home for Malta after trying so many times?
According to the Bookmakers, she will have a hard time to qualify for the final and I’m afraid I will have to agree with that. Yes, Claudia Faniello has a powerful voice and she definitely owns the song when performing live, but ‘Breathlessly’ just sounds a little bit too out of date to connect with audiences these days. It takes too long to properly get going and is just not catchy enough on first listen. Malta chose their entry as one of the first this year and they are quite unlucky that a whole lot of other countries opted to be repesented by female singers with dramatic ballads as well. Within the category, ‘Breathlessly’ is definitely not one of the strongest, although she might still gather some points from the juries when she pulls of a earth-shattering vocal performance. At this stage, it seems highly unlikely to me they will be able to top last year’s 12th position with Ira Losco’s ‘Walk On Water’.
UPDATE – Review on semi final performance:
Where countries like Serbia and FYR Macedonia sounded a bit disappointing live on the big stage, with Malta things were basically the other way around. After trying to win the Maltese national final on multiple occasions, this was Claudia Faniello’s moment to shine and she sang the hell out of her traditional ballad ‘Breathlessly’,delivering one of the best vocal performances of the night. The track however is quite old fashioned and would probably have gained a better result if it was performed at Eurovision in the 90s. She gave it her all, but the song just wasn’t contemporary or captivating enough to entertain the televoters at home.
UPDATE – Semi final result:
Malta’s ‘Breathlessly’ hugely divided juries and televoters in the second semi final. While juries placed Claudia Faniello on the 8th spot, which would be enough to qualify, the televoters did not award her one single point! As a result, Malta finished 16th overall!
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