Online fans of the Eurovision Song Contest say the audience in Switzerland has one job to do when Malta’s Miriana Conte performs live in May: sing out the banned word ‘kant’.
Conte’s original entry, Serving Kant, was banned by festival organisers following complaints that kant, the Maltese word for singing, is phonetically similar to a vulgar English word.
The Maltese singer unveiled the song’s official video on Friday. The song has now been retitled Serving and that the banned word will be replaced with the sound of a raspy “aahh”.
The decision – and video – appear to have struck a chord with online followers of the Eurovision Song Contest.
Within its first 19 hours, the video amassed over 324,000 views and received over 2,200 comments on YouTube.
“This is how you do branding and promotion in the right way,” one comment read.
“Love every detail of the intro and how she included all the fuss and buzz that happened after she won MESC (…) applaud to Malta and Miriana.”
Many said this version is much better, only because now fans in the audience can scream the banned Maltese word.
“The audience will serve and scream Kant! I promise you,” one commented.
“People at the arena, you have one job. Scream: Kant!,” another continued.
Conte is scheduled to perform in Basel on May 15 as part of the contest's second semi-final. As of Saturday, bookmakers ranked her as the 11th favourite out of the 37 contestants.
‘She didn’t lower her voice, she raised the volume!”
The reactions did not stop at the YouTube comment section.
Partit Malta Pogressiva member and former Labour MEP Cyrus Engerer was one of many to praise the revised song.
“When they tried to censor her, she didn’t lower her voice, she raised the volume,” he wrote on Facebook. “Let’s be clear: she’s still owning it, still reclaiming it, still serving. That’s power. That’s resilience. That’s a queen who turns censorship into a stage.”
Music producer and manager Howard Keith Debono praised Conte for holding her ground and not replacing the word Kant with another word.
Sources close to the national delegation originally told Times of Malta the word will be replaced with the surname of the singer, ‘Conte’.
“The word might have been removed, but let’s be honest, you can’t unhear it and that’s the clever thing about it,” he said.
Another individual who reacted to the revamped song was the BBC journalist Faisal Islam, who interviewed Conte on Newsnight a week ago.
BBC Newsnight journalist Faisal Islam's reaction when he found out he was part of Malta's official Eurovision Song video. Photo: XSoundbites of Islam can be heard at the beginning of the music video when he says: “serving something else, brunch maybe, I dunno?”.
Islam reacted to this with a laughing emoji and “well, well, well,” on X, previously known as Twitter.