Malta 2021- Destiny with ‘Je Me Casse’

The final entry for Rotterdam is out, with Destiny being the last to release her song 'Je Me Casse':

As a country often sitting back and waiting to see what the field is like, this is a somewhat surprising choice from them. There's enough here to separate them from the crowd, but if the competition has one thing this year - it's uptempo female numbers. Destiny was always returning, but some sort of big gospel ballad looked much more likely.

I don't think I'm alone in saying it's took me a good few listens to really get to grips with this one and form a solid opinion with my first impressions not being that positive. That opinion is now that this is a solid song let down by it's 'Je Me Casse' refrain and electro swing instrumental. I know that the playing around with genres and tempo is the point here and makes this much more interesting than 'All Of My Love' and whilst it's not particularly jarring, I would say its a letdown. Narratively it's excellent and fits in with the defying convention theme and jurors will love that. Its the televote that I'm not sure on with it, and it's my objective view that this is trying to be too intricate creating structural issues that subconsciously make something seem ‘a little off’ to the televote and derail the enjoyment of this.

Malta are often jury favourites and that should not change this year, given their 'eagerness to win', use of the female empowerment message which jurors keep going for and Destiny's unquestionably impressive vocals. The song still isn't perfect from their perspective and there are more conventionally strong compositions and productions. This will be in and around their top 3/5 but there are again doubts over how far this style of music will spread geographically.

At the top of the odds however, the likely jury favourites massively outweigh the televote picks- I'd expect all of Bulgaria, Malta, Sweden, Switzerland to perform better with the juries and Lithuania and Italy to be the public picks. The jury field may be a little congested for any one song to really pull away there- I can't see any of those four having a Dami Im or Mans Zelmerlow style lead over the others and the televote might carry more importance this year which could be a problem for Malta.

The sassy angle, coupled with that chorus/instrumental is a very risky approach which brings us onto the 'Toy' comparisons. This is pretty much 'Toy- but 1920's style' and whilst Netta proved a hit with the Saturday night audience, that may be more down to the novelty and originality which this is somewhat down on. Without that, the televote may be too split with the other more conventional 'bops'.

Is it too soon for a similar entry, sharing the exact same message? I don't know, but overall Netta's success probably helps my concerns more than giving me additional ones. Either way, whilst popular overall, I'm not sure this is capturing the same levels of support as 'Toy' and it will be interesting to see how this performs in polling and Eurojury over the coming month.

Staging is a huge question mark over this and Malta don't have the best track record. I don't know what they're planning but I can see this looking messy if they go the Charleston route, but then how else do you do this?

The initial market reaction was interesting and whilst first impressions are often wrong (see Switzerland going as high as 60 briefly last year) it does need to be noted. This song with all it’s intricacies is certainly a grower and I do wonder if there is some group-think going on here.

Now for those reasons given I don't think this is the one, but there are enough people out there who's opinions I respect that make me think I am just missing something and focusing on the negatives rather than the positives.

It's also not the kind of year to start going to war with the market now that the entire field is out. Its more a case of timing your betting, getting a good price and having a different sized green on the contenders, rather than making hero call lays so this will stay covered. Malta most likely won't be going anywhere but shorter in the odds until rehearsals given the amount of money behind this- both from those more enamoured with this and from Malta themselves who have been known to play the market and are almost certainly doing so again.

If there's going to be one country to make me look a fool and win easily, it's this, but I'd be lying if I said I believe in its chances right now

Personal Rating: 4/10 Competitive Rating: 8/10 Early Prediction: Semi One 1st-4th, 4th-7th in the final