After Donny Montell’s victory last week in the first heat of Eurovijos 2016, tonight the Lithuanian national preselection continues with the second show of Eurovijos 2016. Eight more acts will take the stage and will fight for the 5 places of the next round. The national jury has already voted. The international judges and the Lithuanian public’s votes will be revealed and combined at night to reveal the winner overall.
Eight more participants will take the stage performing their songs to see who will quallify to the next stage of Eurovijos 2016. As with the first show, the national jury (Darius Užkuraitis, Nomeda Kazlaus and last year’s Lithuanian representative in Eurovision Vaidas Baumila) and international jury (Peter Freudenthal, Syron, Karl Friersonas) watched the performances live, with the Lithanian jury delivering their points during this show. The international judges and the Lithuanian public votes will be revealed and combined tonight in order to see who will be the overall winner and the other quallifiers. In the first show Montell had started off in second place with 10 points from the national jury, but with the televoting and international jury’s votes, he won easily the 1st heat.
The running order of the secound heat of Eurovijos 2016 with the results of the national jury is:
- Jurgis Bruzga – GoOne – 8 points – Generally praised by the judges, felt it needed some rearranging.
- Ugne Smile – You Don’t Know – 4 points – Most of the judges seemed to find this performance to be poor, if at best, inexperienced, calling her nice and charming
- Lawreigna – Falling – 5 points – Depending on the judge, this song felt like it came from either Latin America (Darius), or Greece (Vaidas), and the singer’s voice was praised for its uniqueness, but need to be better conditioned and practiced.
- Istvan Kvik – Please Don’t Cry – 7 points – Praised not only for having some Lithuanian, but also for thinking of how it could be staged further down the road, the vocals were a good point for the judges.
- Catrinah – Be Free – 10 points – High marks for looks, this artist not only wowed visually, but also had some judges sparing no compliments for the vocals, a few tweaks were offered should it move forward to the Eurovision stage.
- Eglė Jakštytė – Leisk Dar Buti – 6 points – Some immediately doubted whether on not this was too much of a Eurovision song but it was generally praised for what it brought, though more was certainly something that would be appreciated.
- Valdas Lacko – Stay Tonight – 3 points – Described as ‘very loud fun’ and ‘very Christmas’, the song seemed to be getting praise for being quite Swedish as well
- Ruta Sciogolevaite – United – 12 points – The song sounded ‘very interesting and very Eurovisionary! to all judges. The best comments so far, Excellent overall.
As was the first round, the second show of the Lithuanian final was recorded earlier, and will be aired today at 20:00 CET on LRT. Can the first place change again after the international jury and the Lithuanian public’s votes will be revealed tonight? You can watch the show on the official website of the Lithuanian broadcaster LRT.
You can watch Donny Montell’s candidate song for this year’s Lithuanian national selection, which already has won the first heat of the contest:
Lithuania in the Eurovision Song Contest
Lithuania has appeared in the contest 16 times with 6 male soloists, 3 female, 5 groups and 2 duos. They made their debut in 1994 with Ovidijus Vyšniauskas performing the song Lopšinė mylimai (Lullaby for my Beloved). Sadly the song received the infamous zero points and Lithuania stayed away from the contest until 1999 when Aiste opened the Israeli hosted show with the song Strazdas (Song Thrush). Having been placed 20th, Lithuania then skipped the following year and returned in 2001 with SKAMP and You’ve Got Style, who gave the country their best result to date coming 13th. Aivaras with Happy You returned Lithuania to the lower placing of 23rd in 2002 and the country dropped out again the following year.
The country returned in 2004 and have been competing each year since then. In this period, they have only been placed in the Top 10 once, with We Are The Winners by LT United in 2004. Enjoy that clip again in the video further below.
All of Lithuania’s songs have been sung in English since 2001 but, unlike some other countries, this does not seem to be helping them reach the upper echelons of the scoreboard. Since the introduction of the semi finals, Lithuania has failed to qualify on 5 separate occasions, the last time being with the EMD influenced track Attention by Vilija.
Donny Montell, one of the favourites this year, gave Lithuania their best result in a semi final in 2012 when he was placed 3rd, finally reaching 14th place in the Baku Final with Love Is Blind. To date, this is Lithuania’s 3rd best placing.
