Summary:
I attended a live Eurovision Song Contest qualifier for Lithuania while in Vilnius!
TL;DR Details:
For decades now, I’ve been intrigued by the motley collection of songs across all musical genres from acts from around Europe (and now beyond) that constitute each year’s Eurovision Song Contest. From ABBA’s winning performance of “Waterloo” in 1974, to Loreen’s repeat win with”Tattoo” in 2023, leading to Sweden to host the Song Contest this year (2024) on the 50th anniversary of ABBA’s historic win (conspiracy theories, anyone?!).
But I’m particularly entertained by the strange, unique, creative performances that are often given over the years, especially in the past decade or two. Here are a few of my favorite examples:
While there are a lot of weird acts, and frankly many just bad songs and performances, there have also been several career-launching performances, not only from ABBA, but from others such as Celine Dion, Julio Iglesias, and Olivia Newton-John. That said, given all the surprisingly offbeat performances, what we see in the Eurovision contest itself is a collection of each country’s winners! That means that often, weird ones are beating out several, if not dozens, of other songs in the country-specific competitions. So, wouldn’t it be fun to get a glimpse into a given country’s Eurovision qualifiers, particularly a small country’s? Say, Lithuania’s, for example??
That’s exactly what I did, and it was great!! Of course, nowadays, you can just go on YouTube to see national qualifiers, but it was super-entertaining to witness the extravaganza all live, and to see a bit behind the scenes of how it’s put together.
First, a little background… Back in 2021, the Eurovision Song Contest had many great songs, including a catchy one from Lithuanian band The Roop:
And on this 7.5-week journey through multiple European countries, I thought that maybe, just maybe, I would be around for some country’s qualifier, since these qualification rounds take place at various times in the months leading up to the Eurovision finals, which this year will be in Malmö, Sweden in May. And as luck would have it, Lithuanian TV was recording a qualifying heat on Tuesday, January 23, my final night in Vilnius. I had figured this out online in advance, but could not, even with my best online search and translation efforts, figure out how to attend the show live (each qualifier show is recorded in advance of airing on TV). So when I visited the tourist office, I asked the two bored-looking ladies there (there aren’t many tourists in late January). They had no idea, and so they researched a while online, but they could only find what I had already. So one kindly offered to call the TV station itself to see what they could find out (in Lithuanian). A producer there at the TV station said that I should just send an email to a given email address and ask for what I wanted, and to my pleasant surprise, it worked! A producer replied to my email in the affirmative, and she said she put my name down on the list. I didn’t even have to pay anything! It seemed almost too good to be true. When I told local Vilnius residents (like the three tour guides I had in the city) that I was going to a Eurovision qualifier, they each reacted with surprise – “What? How?” So while I felt like I had cracked a secret, in advance of the show itself I didn’t feel overly confident that it would actually work out.
While producers hadn’t yet announced who would be in that heat (#4 of 5), The Roop, which is competing again this year, hadn’t performed in any of the first three rounds. So I had believed that it was a 50/50 chance that I’d get to see them, but as it turns out, the show planners put The Roop as the very last act in the final heat. I guess they figured that The Roop was the most popular of all acts, so they might as well save perhaps the best for last, and keep audiences engaged.
In any case, I made it, and I got in, and not only that, but I was for some reason placed in the very front row, on the far left, close to where all the stage hands, director, and acts entered and exited the stage! I was so lucky to have such a prime seat with no other audience members in front of me. I had to make sure to keep my feet tucked under so that I didn’t accidentally trip the roaming cameraman, who for many acts would run across the space between the stage and the first row while filming a performance.
Everything inside the performance room was very modern, with the entire backside of the stage being a big screen, and with an excellent sound system and lighting. There were 200-300 attendees, I’d estimate, and I had to intuit what was going on when the director gave the audience instructions, like when to applaud, but it was simple enough to just follow others’ leads. They didn’t allow for photography during performances, so I don’t have anything else to show you now, but this qualifier will soon be aired, so we can all watch it online!
The singers themselves all had excellent voices, but of course, some songs were better than others. There was one prop malfunction during a performance, but the show continued on. No one got a second take. A few of the acts from that evening already have music videos out for their songs, and I can tell you that they all sounded better in person, haha! It’s like bluegrass in Asheville – awesome live, a letdown on an album. The clear winner in my mind from the evening was Monika Marija – she had a great song, a beautiful voice, and cool stage effects. We’ll see how she does. From each qualifier, two acts are chosen to make it into the final. Here’s an example of one of the songs from the qualifier, and one can see not to take it all too seriously:
The two female announcers were poised and excellent speakers, but I found it humorous to witness what they did and said in the bloopers, which I presume we won’t see in the post-production recording online. One lady never seemed to mess up (that I could tell without knowing Lithuanian), but she also seemed very serious, and quite stressed before the cameras came on, after which she smiled and looked completely comfortable. All while the other host continually seemed comfortable and calm, but kept messing up. Maybe she was too easy-going, haha. And the first, stressed, host would seem to glare at the second when the second would mess up.
As of this post’s publication, a crowd favorite so far has been this one from an earlier qualifier, but I personally don’t understand why:
UPDATE: The qualifier I attended was aired on Saturday, February 3. You can watch highlights here:
You can also see the back and side of me briefly just after these starting points, haha!:
To learn more about the Lithuanian qualifiers, this website provides good details. If you’re interested in learning more about Eurovision in general, here’s the official Eurovision website. Side note: As you might imagine, when getting representatives of multiple nations together, things can become political. This year Iceland is debating whether to forego the competition given that Israel will be participating.
I wrote the Lithuanian TV producer the morning after the show and thanked her for helping to fulfill a dream, haha!
Speaking of art, one of the endearing attributes of Lithuania is its artsy vibe. In both Vilnius and Kaunas, there are many murals painted on buildings, along with representative paintings of long-lost Jewish people in former Jewish quarters (before the Nazis showed up and wiped them out). Below is a gallery of representative examples:
And then there’s Vilnius’s bohemian neighborhood Užupis, which declared itself to be an independent republic on April Fool’s Day in 1997, and it even has its own constitution and currency!
“On April Fool’s Day, citizens of the Užupis Republic celebrate their wholly unofficial state. Border guards wearing comical outfits stamp passports at the main bridge and the Užupis president makes speeches in the quarter’s small square…” Lonely Planet
Today’s dad joke: How did the travel writer describe his visit to the Polish capital on a disagreeably damp and cold day?
Warsaw wasraW! (A bit of foreshadowing here)
Today’s cultural tidbits: I recently came across this article on “14 Things People Think America Does Better Than Europe“. See what you think.
Major Meander 