After a selection process stretching as far back as November, Lithuania has finally chosen their winner.  Fighting off momentum from acts like DAR, Gerai Gerai & Miss Sheep, and constant NF also-ran Linas Adomaitis, it was underdog Andrius Pojavis who took the title with his self-penned song “Something”, despite only coming in third and fourth in his qualification heat and semifinal, respectively:

Lithuania has never really enjoyed the strongest track record at Eurovision.  Their debut entry in 1994 ended up scoring the dreaded “nul points”, and they haven’t scored higher than 6th place in a Final.  On the Semifinal level, however, they have fared somewhat better, coming as high as third place with last year’s “Love is Blind” by Donny Montell. 

Fan reactions to “Something”, however, have been generally middling-to-positive, with some critics even comparing Andruis to a Lithuanian-accented Brandon Flowers.  The presentation at the National Final seems a bit disjointed, but one of the benefits of picking a song so early in the Eurovision year is that the delegation will have plenty of time to refine the song’s staging in time for the big show in May.  Maybe swapping the modern dancers for a guitarist and drummer and swapping the tux for something (anything?) less distracting would make the piece seem more cohesive and less gimmicky.  The song is good enough to stand on its own, and it doesn’t need to be turned into a piece of performance art for the sake of garnering votes.  But for now, as it stands, “Something” seems like a crowd-pleasing dark horse that could very well make a mark on the scoreboard.