Malta

Malta first entered the Eurovision Song Contest in 1971 in Dublin, with Joe Grech's Marija I-Maltija sung entirely in Maltese, and despite scoring 58 points, came in last that year.  Its next entry in Edinburgh in 1972 finished last and the Maltese song in the Stockholm Contest in 1975 placed twelfth.  After these unsuccessful attempts, Malta opted out of the Contest until the 1991 Contest in Rome (the Contest was moved from Sanremo for security reasons during the height of the Gulf War and the rising of tensions in Yugoslavia).  For the Rome Contest that year, Malta returned to the stage in English with Paul Giordimaina and Georgina's Could It Be, and scored its first Top Ten finish (and 106 points).  In the next five years Malta consistently placed in the Top Ten, even finishing in third place in 1992's Malmo Contest with Mary Spiteri's Little Child.  Then Chiara appeared in 1998's Birmingham Contest with The One That I Love to give the small island nation "favored to win" status for the first time in its Eurovision history.  It became clear that the 1998 Contest was a very close battle of the Divas, with Israel (Dana International), the UK (Imani), Netherlands (Edsilia), Croatia (Danijela) and Malta at the top of the leader board with each score distributed by the national juries/televotes. Malta was in the lead over Israel until the last votes came in (from (FYR) Macedonia) and Chiara's song (link below) didn't receive any points from the former Yugoslav republic, giving the win to Israel (and Malta falling to third place behind the UK).

The nail-biting near-win got Chiara, who was visibly shaken and disappointed with the result, on the European music map and charts, and put Malta on a mission to bring a win back to Valetta.  The country had a Birmingham-like experience in 2002 in Talinn with Ira Losco's 7th Wonder (coming in a very close second to Latvia).  The next few years saw Malta up and down the score board, until Chiara's return to the Contest in Kiev in 2005.  There, she was once again favored to win with her song Angel, alongside Elena Paparizou and Israel's Shiri Maimon.  However, after the first few countries had dispensed their votes, Elena became the clear front runner (she kind of swept the contest), with Chiara ending up second (Israel ended up fourth behind a very surprised third-placing Romania).  The Kiev contest became the figurative straw that broke the country's back and left Malta struggling to make it to the Final (or scoring points if/when it made it that far).  [Chiara returned to the Contest in Moscow in 2009, hoping that her third appearance would be her charm, but returned home in 22nd place.]

This year  Malta's entry Tomorrow will be presented by Gianluca Bezzina, a twenty-three year old doctor, the third sibling of seven, and part-time singer, who vowed the Maltese audience during the national selection process and won the right to represent the country in Malmo.  It will be interesting to see if this sweet ukelele-accompanied song will be able to stand out in a field dominated electronic and ethno pop songs: