Eurovision final: a duel between Lithuania and Latvia

Following Estonia’s elimination from the Eurovision Song Contest’s first semi final a few days ago all hopes for a Baltic victory were resting on the other two Baltic nations Latvia and Lithuania. The tension could be felt in the Press centre as the votes came in but the artist Justs Simrais and his team were able to breathe a sigh of relief  when Latvia was the first country named to qualify to the final. As the announcement of the other 9  countries that had qualified was being made the whole of Lithuania was holding it’s breath! Then after seven countries were announced came the magic words that everyone on the far side of the Baltic Sea was waiting to hear “LITHUANIA!” – and so began what will most definitely be a duel between two friendly Baltic nations…. Because both Lithuania’s and Latvia’s songs are of very high quality as are the respective artists Donny Montell and  Justs Simrais.

The second semi final was full of  surprises,  the biggest one being that despite having extremely good songs  two  Scandinavian nations, Norway and Denmark were eliminated. The same applies to Ireland whose song was catchy. Some of the countries that qualified really haven’t got any chance at all of winning the final which leads one to assume that they may have qualified due to “friendship voting” (neighbouring countries voting for each other) A few examples of songs, that despite what their artists and managers say, just don’t have any hope of winning this year’s contest. are Poland, Israel and Ukraine and Georgia.

The Polish song was somewhat catchy but not catchy enough to win the Eurovision Song Contest and it was nowhere near the quality of  the songs from Lithuania and Latvia. The same applies to the Israeli song and the Ukrainian song. The two last named countries could be getting sympathy votes. Israel is notorious for riding on a sympathy wave  and judging from the cheers and audience reactions in the Globe Arena it seems apparent that Ukraine qualified because the audience sympathized with the country  for  being harassed by  Comrade Vladimir Putin! The song itself is not a hit and so just like the Russian song in the first semi final, other factors are being leaned upon in order to gain success in the competition. Finally the Georgian song was totally out of date by Eurovision standards and will probably finish up last or definitely way down at the bottom of the list on Saturday.

The two Baltic songs in the second semi final held a very high quality and both Latvia and Lithuania deserved to qualify to the final. Both artists Donny Montell (Lithuania) and Justs Simrais (Latvia) have shown that all it really takes to make success in Eurovision is to have a good song and a good artist and that all the special effects used by nations like Russia don’t really matter unless the melody and lyrics of the song are competitive, which in Russia’s case is not so.

My predictions for the top ten in the final are as follows  (in random order)

Netherlands, Austria, Russia, Latvia, Sweden, Lithuania, Bulgaria, France, Australia and  Croatia.

But then again I could be totally wrong, and that is the exciting thing about the Eurovision Song Contest – it’s always full of surprises one of which in this year’s final  is definitely going to be “who will win the duel between Latvia and Lithuania?” That will be revealed on Saturday at the final of the 61st Eurovision Song Contest.

Footnote:

The Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2016 will be aired live on Saturday 14th May on all televisions in Europe. Australia and some in the United States.