With summer now tantalisingly close, it’s time for people to start compiling their ultimate playlists for the warm season. From pool parties to endless music festivals, tracks by artists like The Chainsmokers, Kygo and Alan Walker will definitely make it onto millions of people’s Spotify Playlists, with many looking for their new favourite tune. One YouTube account seems to know this all too well, click-baiting lesser-known artists’ new songs with big established names. And featuring heavily in the backdrop of these songs, is good old Malta.

In a video uploaded onto the YouTube channel Trending Now a couple of weeks ago, our island can be seen flexing its sunny, beautiful self in an awesomely-shot vlog set to an EDM tune that’s been racking up the views. As we speak, the video has amassed 1,562,969 views, which is great. There’s only one catch though; the song isn’t, as advertised, the latest by Justin Bieber, The Chainsmokers and Kygo. 

It turns out that the track is actually Pitfalls, by Sistek (featuring Tudor and Amy J. Pryce). That song appeared online over a year ago, racking up substantially less views even all this time later. What does persist in the clickbait video, though, is the beauty of the Maltese islands… and it didn’t take long for people to start noticing.

A couple of days later, another Trending Now upload featured Malta. Only this time, the song – Summer Love by Deamn – was actually advertised as the latest by Kygo, Alan Walker and Sia. Oh, and they just used the exact same circa 2017 vlog again.

That video is currently close to hitting 100,000 views, but people were quick to point out that the title of the upload just didn’t add up.

Barely one month old, Trending Now’s YouTube account currently has 22 videos, and has managed to amass over 35,000 subscribers. In that short period of time, it’s managed to rack up nearly seven million views.

The channel’s latest update, purporting to be the latest by Zara Larsson, Martin Garrix and Kygo, appeared online just 18 hours ago, but already has upwards of 91,000 views. Of course, it wasn’t long until the “This is clearly not Zara Larsson” comments started coming in, but with such uploads (falsely) attracting so many tens of thousands of people, here’s hoping Malta makes another random comeback on Trending Now channel… before it’s inevitably put down for all the clicks it’s been baiting.

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David Grech Urpani

Lovin Malta's Head of Content, Dave has been in journalism for the better half of the last decade. Prefers Instagram, but has been known to doomscroll on TikTok. Loves chicken, women's clothes and Kanye West (most of the time).