We start off heat 2 with a brightly coloured dance group, before a welcome from our hosts,
one of whom seems to be dressed up as leftover holiday sweets and is rather distracting as I
can’t figure out what the dress is made from. Anyway…
Another eight artists performing tonight, with only two going through to the final. But first,
an introduction to this weeks jury panel
- Ramunas Zilnys
- Ieva Narkute
- Vytautas Bikus
- Ieva Zasimauskaite
- Kristupas Naraskevicius
First up is Andrius Pojavis (the Lithuanian entrant in 2013) with “Sing Me A Hug” – this is a
competent effort, if nothing exciting, and reminds me of something I can’t put my finger on.
Something missing from that and not grabbing me.
Next up we have Eley, with “Rock My Body” a catchy, 80s inspired pop number. This looks
like it’s had more money spent on it, though I’d question whether it was all worth it. Vocal
performance was good, but certainly some choices made in costuming, prop and most of all
lighting. It’s pretty dark. Oh, and there’s a dance break *yawn*.
Onto Deividas Valma now, and his song “Blood on your Hands”. Again with fairly dark
staging, being largely a black and red backdrop, with his backing vocalists and a dancer all in
black. He’s performing well, though sounds like he’s struggling a little with vocals at times.
Fourth up for this heat is Aiste with her song “We Will Rule the World” and now we appear
to be back in the 70s, maybe. She’s having fun and selling it, but this isn’t one to send to
ESC. I’m a little confused as to what’s going on, vocally, sonically and on stage generally.
Fifth up is Zalvarinis with their song “Gaude Vejai” and… I’m not even sure what genre this
is. Lithuanian country rock maybe? It’s an engaging performance, certainly the best put
together we’ve seen so far this heat.
Sixth tonight is Paula Urbana and “It is what it is”, maybe the most current sounding track
this evening, and well performed. She’s alone on stage but draws the attention.
Penultimate entry tonight is Thomas G and “Us” – he seems young and a bit nervous on
stage. Vocals a little shaky, and this is a fairly standard guitar led pop song. It’s a no from me
on this one.
Lastly for now we have Multiks and “Vejas Galvoje”, they were here last year and have
come back for another try. This reminds me of 90s indie/britpop and is fairly enjoyable,
though I don’t think it would fare well at ESC.
Ieva Zasimauskaite gives us a performance, before we get the voting results of jury and
public votes.
Jury place Aiste first and Zalvarinis second, with the public vote doing the reverse of that,
and with that there’s nothing any of the other competitors can catch up so it’s Aiste and
Zalvarinis heading to the final.