Lithuania may be a small Eurovison nation but they certainly throw a lot at Pabandom, their method of choosing their Eurovision entrant for the past three years. Thankfully, the days of the ten show extravaganzas are over, with the nation now opting for a much more reasonable three heat, two semi final, one final format. The set is modest, but functional, and unlike some national finals, multi lingual hosts,a bonus for this lazy Aussie.
The show opens with Mario,and his sleek RNB track, its nice, he's an attractive fella with some swagger about him, but ultimately, I think this will end up forgotten.
MoonBee takes to the stage second with her sweet Alt-pop number. Shes very endearing indeed. The stage set is delightful and I'm starting to think that this national final may be one to rival some of the bigger, more loved nations.
Juste and the slightly baffling 'need more fun' is performed next. A question,, why would you keep your lead singer off stage for the first full minute of the song only to have her enter, indistinguishable from the back up dancers? Odd
Paulina and her autotune heavy pop song 'let me think about me' is up next. It's always hard as a good singer, to take on such a pedestrian song and do it with any real love. Way too good for this material.
Punk pop Beatrich, one of my personal favourites hits the stage next. It's very solid, with maybe the most fun dance moves I've seen in a while. After seeing this i don't think she will win it though
After the longest ad break in history Ruta and her 80's sad diva infused track are next. And delivers. Transfixed. The song has layers and can be tricky to do justice without a vocal backing track and Ruta holds the fort all alone, like a champion. This will be near impossible to beat.
The next act I like to call the singing news readers. I smell a rat with these guys. They cleaned the floor with the televote in their semi final, after just scraping through the heat, meaning I think something was quite off here. Anywho, it's that naff familiar four vocal artists pretending they like each other, motioning and holding hands and smiling.. you know the type. familiar, and annoying
Petunija follows with her big piano torch ballad. I'm a sucker for these. Beautiful vocals and an intimate and personal staging. Perfect! dark horse?
The penultimate performer is Vagelis. He's no stranger to this competition. This outing however, is kind of contrived, a lot rehearsed and more than a little inspired by Sweden
Our last act is familiar Monika, back again with what I consider one of her weaker attempts since trying to rekindle her Eurovison dream. Like Vagelis, I think she had been watching Sweden a little too closely, namely, the Mama's, this looking more like a Melfest semi final non qualifier than her own work.
And the voting is happening. We are treated to Duncan Laurence and Monika Liu.
Monika came out as the winner with the jury with 97
Ruta second with 88
Beatrich third with 78
In the televote
Ruta came out first with 12822
Monika second with 12675
Beatrich third with 9392
Meaning a tie on 22 points, however they decided to go with the jury vote awarding Monika the win over the popular vote of Ruta. Im a little sore over this, what are your thoughts?