Lithuania 2024: Silvester Belt with ‘Luktelk’

We're slowly getting through the backlog of reviews with the most promising entry from Saturday next in line for an examination:

I find this without question the most interesting entry we have so far with not many natural comparisons, and that's a good thing. I’ve seen ‘Soldi’ and ‘Rythm Inside’ both mentioned whilst another that comes to my mind is the less catchy ‘Heartbeat’ (2016) from neighbours Latvia. There's a relentless hook to this and it stands apart from the rest of the field as something kind of fresh and new to Eurovision.

Lithuania already have a good production and not a lot of work needs doing to transition this. What we have already seen wouldn’t look out of place at a big awards show which is a huge compliment but if you are in the camp that you need to identify with the singer in some way we don't get a lot of that. As slick and professional as this is, Silvester doesn't have much chance to connect to the audience behind the dance moves and intense lighting. This is the sort of refinement that would make this really impressive; keep the vibe and authenticity but get in some more meaningful camera engagement. Vocals could also do with beefing up a little meaning that and the repetive nature of the song has me expecting a lower jury score than televote.

Another reason for that is Lithuania also have one of the most committed and active diasporas who will no doubt be throwing their weight behind this big domestic hit. That diaspora score is around 40-50pts and ‘Luktelk’ should be able to score at least that again on it's own merit. Very loosely, this looks like a 100-200pt televote entry and a 50-150 jury one. Obviously qualification is not in question but this might find itself opening the semi and there are a few assumed big hitters in here.

This doesn't look like a winner, but it's one to be cautious on as something somewhat untested. What it might do is finally surpass ‘We Are The Winners’ (2006) as Lithuania’s highest ever finish, this could be somewhere in that ball park but might be reliant on a few of the yet to reveal countries being weaker than the odds have them.

Personal Rating: 9/10

Competitve Rating: 8/10

Early Prediction: Semi 1 2nd-5th, 4th-8th in the final.