Kevin Borg

Kevin Borg, a pop singer hailing from Malta, achieved widespread recognition across Sweden in 2008 after claiming victory in the fifth season of the Idol reality competition. He entered the world on June 9, 1986, in Floriana, Malta, and first pursued music professionally in his native country throughout the mid-2000s before relocating to Arvidsjaur, Sweden, toward the end of 2007. Selected the next year to participate in Idol’s fifth season—the Swedish edition of Pop Idol—he claimed the top spot by outlasting runner-up Alice Svensson in the December 12, 2008, finale, where he delivered “With Every Bit of Me,” a track Andreas Carlsson and Jörgen Elofsson had penned expressly for the occasion. Immediately after his triumph, Borg inked a deal with Sony BMG, leading to the commercial release of “With Every Bit of Me,” which held the summit of the Swedish singles chart for four consecutive weeks and remained inside the Top Ten for a total of eight. Several months afterward he issued his first full-length project, the English-language album The Beginning (2009), whose material came predominantly from established songwriters; the set climbed to number three on the Swedish albums chart and yielded the follow-up Top Ten single “Street Lights.”