Donny Montell is Lithuania's choice for Eurovision

Just as I had predicted, the domestic Eurovision contest organised by LRTV (Lithuanian National Television) was won by Donny Montell with his song “I’ve been waiting for this night” . Montell was chosen by a majority vote to represent his country in the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest to be held in Stockholm  in May.  After years of  embarrassingly poor artists and even poorer songs, Lithuania has  finally hit the jackpot and selected what definitely appears to be the right artist and the right song to put the Baltic States back onto the International Eurovision music map as it’s neighbours Estonia and Latvia did at the turn of the century.

Of all the participants, who competed in last Saturday’s final in Vilnius,  the only other artist who made any notable impact was Erica Jennings .  Her performance was  the most impressive amongst all of Donny Montell’s competitors and it truly went right through the television screens and into the hearts of the Lithuanian people. With an almost golden voice and extremely well choreographed performance, Jennings made what can only be described as a world class act.  But despite this impressive performance, her bad choice of song contributed to her losing the victory to Donny Montell.  Jennings’ song “Leading me home” could not compete with Montell’s song, the difference being that “I’ve been waiting for this night”  is a modern pop-rock hit which appeals to the majority of televoters i.e. the younger audiences whereas Erica Jennings’ song is a slightly dated and somewhat non commercially viable Gospel ballad and anyone who knows anything about Eurovision knows that gospel songs don’t work in the Eurovision Song Contest.  

The other competitors in the final contest didn’t really have any chances of winning. Amongst these was however one of the competitions best songs, “United”  which was totally destroyed by the poor performance by Rūta Ščiogolevaitė who just was not able to give the song the vocal power and choreography that it deserved.  Two other artists who deserve a mention are Ruslanas Kirilkinas with his song ”In my World” and Ieva Zasimauskaitė – with her song  Life (Not that beautiful). Both of these gave impressive performances, but they unfortunately lacked the clout to seriously compete with Montell or Jennings. One competitor who definitely needs to be mentioned is Aiste Pilvelyte whose  performance of the song ”You Bet” was perhaps the worst thing I have ever witnessed in any Eurovision contest. Pilvelyte’s English was the worst I have heard in Lithuania. Nothing she sang could be understood – even by a native English speaker like myself,  and I cannot understand why she subjected herself and her audience to such an ordeal as  she did.  My aforementioned feelings were shared by one of the Jury Members who totally crushed Pilvelyte’s performance at last Saturday’s final contest.

In general the quality of the contest was not only excellent but a thousand times better than anything Lithuania has ever produced in the past. Much of the credit for this is due to the good visions displayed by LRTVs Audrius Girzadas and the hard work put into the production of the event by the independent producer Lauras Luciunas. Inspired the well known programmes “American Idol” and “Britain’s Got Talent”, the Lithuanian selection process was, however at times very long and drawn out, because of some of the jury members egoistic needs to hear their own voices! But with the professionalism displayed by the Jury’s Chairman Ramunas Zilnys and his colleague Darius Uzkuraites , the victory by Donny Montell was justified. 

So what happens now and can Lithuania win? If I knew the answer to that I would be God, but I can say this much. I think Lithuanians and the Baltics in general are in for a pleasant surprise in the month of May.