It has become tradition for Maltese Eurovision concerts to feature a performance from the country’s representative of the previous year.

However, this will not be the case for Christabelle Borg, who has not been invited to perform at the X Factor Malta finale this Saturday despite representing Malta in last year’s Eurovision with the song Taboo.

“It’s a proper pity that the X Factor Malta winner will be going to Eurovision but till today they forgot to invite the winner of MESC 2018 to perform next week,” Christabelle said in an Instagram story last night. “But I still support local talent and local production, so super well done to all the production team and all the singers performing.”

Christabelle later removed the post, but confirmed with Lovin Malta that this was not because the X Factor producers had issued a late invitation to her

“I wrote that post after several people messaged me to ask whether I’ll be performing on Saturday, but I deleted it because I realised there are more important music-related things going on in my life right now,” Christabelle told Lovin Malta.

This was a reference to an album she is working on (in collaboration with budding songwriter Shaun Farrugia) that she plans to release in the coming months.

“I think X Factor is a great platform for artists and has helped us get to know about talented singers we hadn’t known before, but the most important thing for me right now is my album,” she finished.

The finale of X Factor will feature Michela Pace, Nicole Frendo, Owen Leuellen and Petra going head to head for the chance to represent Malta at this year’s Eurovision in Tel Aviv, as well as win themselves a contract with Sony.

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Tim Diacono

Tim is interested in the rapid evolution of human society and is passionate about justice, human rights and cutting-edge political debates. You can follow him on Instagram or Twitter/X at @timdiacono or reach out to him at [email protected]