Kurt Calleja’s Power Ballad ‘Bla Tarf’ Hits 1.1 Million Streams
If you attended a wedding in Malta this summer, there’s a high chance you watched the newlyweds dance the night away to one of the island’s most recent hits.
Maltese singer/songwriter Kurt Calleja released Bla Tarf during the Maltese musical festival Mużika Mużika earlier this year – and the song has already hit over an incredible 1 million streams.
Bla Tarf, which won this year’s edition of Mużika Mużika, is a powerful love ballad which literally translates to “without an end”, symbolising the emotion and sentiments which Calleja poured into the making of this song.
Speaking to Lovin Malta, Calleja said: ‘I think any songwriter would be happy that his or her product was well received. Even if I got 200,000 or even 100,000 streams that means that either 100,000 people listened to something that you created or less people listened to something that you created more than once. If someone listens to your music more than once it means that it somehow hit a nerve or they can relate to the song in one way or other”.
“Malta’s population is barely over half 1 million. Not all Maltese people listen to Maltese songs and when a song is in our native language that means that it cannot be exported to countries that don’t speak the language,” he continued.
“As a songwriter having created a song together with Peter Borg and Aleandro Monsigneur that has reached out to so many people in different situations and has somehow inspired a smile on their face or in their hearts gives me great pleasure.”
Calleja spoke about seeing crowds of people emotionally singing the words to the song throughout his shows this year.
“Listening to a crowd of people sing their hearts out to lyrics that were once in your head and have now been transferred from a pencil to a paper and onto the hearts of so many people is the greatest reward any songwriter can ever hope to achieve.”
Calleja ended by saying that “having a song that has done so well makes it a bit more challenging to maintain that standard – but to be given the chance to get experience that at least once in my lifetime gives me great joy and pride in my work as a Maltese artist, singer and songwriter”.
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The song really gained traction over the summer as it proved to be a hit a local weddings, often being featured in the same vein as other classic Maltese weddings songs like Xemx and Sweet Caroline.
Calleja had previously rose to prominence in the local scene after his track ‘This Is The Night’ was chosen to represent Malta at the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest. This surely cemented Calleja as a familiar face in the local music scene and Bla Tarf manages to bring Calleja back to the forefront of Maltese music.
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