Photo Credit: Albert Camilleri
After a long process with 36 acts hoping to represent Malta at Eurovision 2024 in Malmö, on the 3rd February 2024, Sarah Bonnici emerged victorious with her song ‘Loop‘!
In this article, we take a look at her career so far, her previous MESC (Malta Eurovision Song Contest) attempts and take a look at her journey to Eurovision.
Early Career and Personal Life
Sarah Bonnici was born on the 30th May 1998, 3 weeks exactly after Chiara gave Malta their best ever Eurovision result to date – 3rd place. She was born in Gozo and her dad is the CEO of Mercury Towers and the Ħamrun Spartans football club. While Sarah has a master’s degree in accountancy, music, singing and dancing has always been her passion.
Sarah is no stranger to being on big stages even when she was young! She started singing at the age of 9 and was mentored by Miriam Christine, who some eurofans will remember as she took part in Eurovision 1996, for Malta with ‘In A Woman’s Heart’ which finished in 10th place. It was Miriam who had encouraged her to take part in her first local singing competition where she eventually finished in 1st place.
In 2009, she took part in the Malta Junior Eurovision Song Contest where the winner would represent the nation later that year, she sang ‘The Mambo Song‘ where she finished in 3rd place. The following year, she took part again with ‘Kitty Cat Cat‘ where she finished in 7th place. But this time the ending was happier, Sarah was chosen to be a back up dancer for the eventual winner Nicole Azzopardi‘s performance at Junior Eurovision in Belarus.
That same year, she also won the 4th edition of the L-Għanja Tal-Maltin Song Festival, placing first in her age group with a song written by Miriam Christine and winning the ‘Best Voice’ category within the same contest.
Over the coming years, her singing began to take her to more places. Sarah had began to taken part in various international singing festivals in Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, even going onto win the Ti Amo Festival in Romania. She also began to see more success domestically where she won the “New Talent” section of the Festival Kanzunetta Indipendenza in 2012, and later won the main category of the festival in 2018 with the song ‘Il-Pinna’.
Sarah released her first single ‘Bandwagon‘ in 2015 and then released songs ‘Breathe Your Love‘ and ‘Il’Pinna‘ in 2017 and 2018 respectively. Later in 2018, Sarah Bonnici took part in the first series of X Factor Malta where the winner would go onto represent Malta at Eurovision 2019. At the audition, she sang ‘Somebody Else’s Guy‘ by Jocelyn Brown, giving a confident performance and achieving four yesses from the judges. Despite the positive comments, she didn’t make it into the final 24 and Judges’ Houses.
MESC 2022
Sarah then entered her first MESC in 2022, where she sang ‘Heaven’, which was written by Aidan Cassar, who that same year took part himself with ‘Ritmu‘. Her song was a ballad and she qualified for the final, eventually finishing in 12th place, which was a respectable position for her debut.
MESC 2024 and ‘Loop’
After a year break, Sarah released more of her own material and achieved her first Top 10 single in Malta called ‘Never Ever‘. She was then revealed as one of the 36 participants taking part in MESC 2024 with her song ‘Loop‘ and she performed her song in the first semi-final back in October. Each contestant performed their song in a small studio with no LEDs in an informal setting. Despite the lack of staging, fans started to draw attention to her song and her mini dance break, seeing the potential, and eagerly waiting for the studio version.
In late November, Sarah Bonnici was announced as one of the 12 qualifiers who would compete in the final and would be able to make a music video for their respective songs and perform a live-on-tape performance.
Fans had to wait until February 1st for the music videos and studio tracks to be revealed, and ‘Loop‘ was one of the songs to have had a slight revamp compared to the Semi-Final performance. The music video contained a more polished dance break and the video was met with acclaim to Eurovision fans, although bookies weren’t as sure, and had ranked her 5th in the odds prior to the final. In the live-on-tape performance, fans were wowed by her live vocals and her new revamped dance break which involved her and her dancers each putting on a blindfold, then the dancers lifted Sarah, flipping her 360 degrees. After a tense voting sequence, Sarah won the jury vote in a landslide and finished 2nd in the televote, losing to MATT BLXCK, but it was still enough for her to achieve a comfortable victory overall.
In an interview with Lovin Malta, moments after her victory, she said:
“I just can’t believe it, honestly I don’t even know what I’m feeling at the moment!”
When asked what are you most looking forward to for Eurovision and what message do you have for everyone who voted, she said:
“I’m really now looking forward to obviously, keep on training and making sure that my performance will be 100 times better than the one here, and I would just like to thank everyone who voted and everyone who supported me cause the support that I received has been amazing, so I’m super super grateful!”
Sarah will be performing in the Second Semi Final on the 9th of May, where she will be performing in the first half of the show and she’ll be competing against 15 other countries for those 10 places in the final. Qualification won’t be a foregone conclusion for her as it will once again be a tough contest, and Malta hasn’t qualified since 2021. Will Sarah bring back Malta to the final? What other surprises does Sarah have in store for us? We’ll find out in May!
Are you happy with Malta’s choice? Let us know in the comments!
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