It’s my top Baltic country once again, and this is the fifth countdown in a row with Lithuania in my top 10. Lithuania may be the only Baltic country yet to win, but they have become the most consistent in achieving decent results in recent years. They’ve had 8th, 14th and 11th places in the past few years and would have been one of the favourites to win the cancelled 2020 contest. They have also made a return to using Lithuanian in their entries – fully in 2022, partly last year, and fully again this year. Can this Lithuanian language renaissance also work for Silvester Belt?

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Silvester is a singer-songwriter who, like many Eurovision artists, has a London connection – he studied Commercial Music Performance at the University of Westminster. He took part in the national selection for Junior Eurovision back in 2010, and then in 2017 he won a reality TV show “I Am a Superhit” and then entered the Lithuanian X Factor in 2018. He entered the Lithuanian national selection this year with his electronic pop song “Luktelk”, and swept to victory in the superfinal, and secured a number one in the Lithuanian charts.

This is a very cool, uptempo electronic pop banger (and in native language too). There is a lot to like in this – or a lot I like anyway. I love some of the punctuating brass sounds you get, I love the instrumental section (it has some great kick dancing and red-blue light strobing) and the Lithuanian language really seems to work well with this. That might well be by design as Silvester revealed that the lyrics were written with “the intention that the consonants resemble other words in other languages”, so that the song was “simpler and more understandable for foreigners”. From my perspective that has definitely worked. “Luktelk” translates as “wait” and Silvester says the song is about getting stuck in a (matrix) loop unable to tell what’s a dream and what’s real – but still having to get up tomorrow and still having to dance.

This has done well in the Eurovision scoreboard app as you might expect – uptempo electropop bangers do tend to – and Silvester has shown that he can deliver this live and there’s a tried and tested staging concept, dance moves etc. It’s not been given a great placing in the running order but I just don’t see this as having any issues with qualifying. The Lithuanian diaspora is one of the most reliable – and there are several diaspora-heavy countries in the semi, plus neighbours. On top of that, it’s a very good entry that is televote friendly so I think it’s safe for the final.

How will it do once it gets to the final? Well, frustratingly, Lithuania’s best result is still, remarkably, “We are the Winners” which finished in sixth place in 2006. Much as though I like this song, it’s not going to beat that – there are a handful of songs that will do better in either televote, jury and combined for this to reach quite that high. Top 10 is a reasonable aspiration though, driven more via public vote I expect, but would be well-deserved for another really good entry from Lithuania, and a great addition to the Eurovision club night bangers collection.

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Lithuania in the Eurovision Song Contest