03/03/12 LITHUANIA

The Lithuanian Final was held on March 3rd, hosted by Liepa Rimkeviciene & Darius Uzkuraitis. Before the final there were 4 semi-finals where the long list of 36 was reduced to a final of 14. The winner was chosen in two rounds of voting. In the first round the top 3 was chosen by televoting (50%) & an "expert" jury (50%), whilst in the second round the winner was chosen by an "expert" jury.  After an epic show that seemed to last hours the winner was announced as Donny Montell with the song “Love is Blind”

One would say that this is a song of 2 halves. During the first half of the song, Donny is wearing a black blindfold, mirroring the title of the song whilst singing quite a slow melodic melody with a very minimal soulful backing track. During this time he is still emoting using his hands and does move a little. He then starts the chorus which then builds in the backing track with a more noticeable beat. Halfway through he then removes the blindfold, does a one handed somersault and then starts disco dancing and interacting with the audience.

Donny is alone on stage and the song (as it is) does not require backing singers. I feel that Donny is able to command the stage by himself and I actually feel that more bodies on the stage would detract from the fact that Donny is a very strong singer and performer. The song is OK. I would say that the first half is much stronger then the second visually and melodically. There is also a strange part about two minutes in when her repeats the ‘love is blind’ part like a stuck record which sounds very odd and could go wrong very easily.

I would say that this is quite an interesting choice by the Lithuanians. As I have already stated Donny is a strong performer and singer. Not the strongest of songs, not even the more Eurovision of songs, but it is pleasant enough. Maybe a bit too pleasant…

A video of his winning performance can be found on LRT's youtube site below.

http://www.youtube.com/user/LRTinklas?feature=watch

SONG – Love is blind

ARTIST – Donny Montell (Donatas Montvydas)

COMPOSERS –

LANGUAGE – English