Phil’s Eurovision Countdown 2021 – Part 22 of 39 – Lithuania

If, as I postulated yesterday, Latvia aren’t much good at this contest, then Lithuania are only slightly less worse. Back in 2020, The Roop were coronated winners of their usual protracted national selection, only to save us all from slapping the lead singer when we saw ‘On Fire’.

The Roop were, for those of you with short memories, that other group that would have won the 2020 Eurovision if Iceland or country X hadn’t. They came back in a sham national final for 2021 , where they were all but guaranteed to win, begging the question why anyone else bothered to take part.

‘Discoteque’ is, like ’10 years’ for Iceland: not as good as their previous entry but with ‘On Fire’ being one of the standouts of 2020 – that doesn’t mean that this is poor.  If we take away the lead singer and his stupid hand movements – which grate on my nerves because the song doesn’t need him to be a dick – the song is a disco stomper. The breathless one.word.sentences.of.the.verse are all designed to get into the head of our simple televoter, as is the fact that they use “Discoteque” as a verb. Getting away from that, it’s a good piece of pop. It’s catchy as all hell in quite the opposite ways to Denmark and Germany, and as it’s opening the whole shebang on the Tuesday night, there is every likelihood enough people will go “it’s the song with the funny hand movements” and get it through.

When it gets to the final, though, it’ll be in direct competition with other good songs from the second semi final, and it has all the elements to be televoter gold.

Jury wise I’m not sure. I’d like to think they can spot a radio and YouTube-friendly song, but I’m pretty certain they’ll look at this and go “yeah no” … and that would be a shame.

Phil’s Score – 8/10