Menu

Ira Losco: The Siren!

Sotiris Chartzoulakis had the chance to welcome in 12points.gr one of the most impressive artists this year, the Maltese Ira Losco, The Siren of Mediterranean Sea!
    Losco represented Malta at the Eurovision Song Contest 2002 with the song “7th Wonder”. She finished as runner up, just 12 points behind eventual winner Marie N, which was Malta’s highest result ever in the competition until it was equaled in 2005.
    In December 2015, it was revealed that Losco had submitted two songs for the Malta Eurovision Song Contest 2016, the country’s national selection process. Her entries “Chameleon” and “That’s why I love you” were both shortlisted for the semifinal, with “Chameleon” qualifying to the final. On 23 January, Ira won the national selection with over 40% of the votes cast by the Maltese public.
    Following Losco's win at the Malta Eurovision Song Contest 2016, the singer stated that she was open to the idea of performing a song other than "Chameleon" at the Eurovision Song Contest should it improve Malta's chances of winning. The national final rules set by PBS allowed for the winning song to be partially modified or completely changed. On 19 February 2016, PBS announced that that an international jury consisting of representatives from ten countries along with local experts from Malta will be presented with several songs, including a revamped version of "Chameleon", and will determine which song Ira Losco will ultimately perform at the Eurovision Song Contest. On 14 March 2016, it was announced that Ira would perform the song Walk on Water at the Eurovision Song Contest 2016. The song and video were released on 17 March 2016. The same dress designers of Lady Gaga, Prince and Kylie Minogue, Alex Zabotto-Bentley, have designed the dress of Losco for the coming Eurovision Song Contest.

Second Place….
Yes back in 2002!

Your return to Eurovision was something that you wanted or it happened?
    I think it’s happened and at the same time I considered it after I saw Loreen win in 2012. I started to think of the festival has been more relevant to what is happening in the music industry and because I was an artist was evolving in the same way you know, in the pass fourteen years, I thought “OK it is a good opportunity to reconsider festival again.”

What do you think has changed since 2002 in Eurovision?
    Oh so much, the genre of music, the quality of music all these years, like everything you know, years pass and it gets better and better and better! The staging of the show has become massive, the production. The social media also helps the artist to be more interactive with the fans, more popularity, it’s also a better vehicle to promote your music. It’s much easier!

Many countries this year playing with the visual effects, do you believe that they help an entry?
    I think that it helps because when it been such a huge television show then a lot of emphasis has always been placed on the visuals. So I think it does help a country, however I also do believe that a very good song is always the best think you can have! So the song is very very important, the visuals I think help it to look better!

You don’t have for your song much visual effects…
    There are yes but when you need to shore the mountain because we have lot of issues with them so fingers cross and everything would be OK!

I would like to thank you…
Thank you so much…

Good Luck to you and your country…. And I hope to see you in the final of course!
    I hope so, fingers crossed, is very hard for us, we are a small country and I am so in depend on you to helping us to get to the final.

    We like to thank Ira Losco for this Interview, we wish her the best, and we like to thank our journalist Sotiris for his clever work!