Lithuania was represented at the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 with the song "Attention", written by Vilija Matačiūnaitė and Viktoras Vaupšas, and performed by Matačiūnaitė herself. The Lithuanian participating broadcaster, Lithuanian National Radio and Television (LRT), organised the national final "Eurovizijos" dainų konkurso nacionalinė atranka (Eurovision Song Contest national selection) in order to select its entry for the contest. The national final took place over 12 weeks and involved 20 artists and 16 songs competing in two different competitive streams. The results of each show were determined by the combination of votes from a jury panel and a public vote, and "Attention" performed by Vilija eventually emerged as the winner following the final.
Lithuania was drawn to compete in the second semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest which took place on 8 May 2014. Performing during the show in position 7, "Attention" was not announced among the top 10 entries of the second semi-final and therefore did not qualify to compete in the final. It was later revealed that Lithuania placed 11th out of the 15 participating countries in the semi-final with 36 points.
Background
Prior to the 2014 contest, Lithuania had participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 14 times since its first entry in 1994. The nation’s best placing in the contest was sixth, which it achieved in 2006 with the song "We Are the Winners", performed by LT United. Following the introduction of semi-finals in 2004, Lithuania, to this point, had managed to qualify to the final six times. In the 2013 contest, "Something" performed by Andrius Pojavis qualified to the final, where the song scored 17 points and placed 22nd.
For the 2014 contest, the Lithuanian national broadcaster, Lithuanian National Radio and Television (LRT), broadcast the event within Lithuania and organised the selection process for the nation's entry. Other than the internal selection of their debut entry in 1994, Lithuania has selected their entry consistently through a national final procedure. LRT confirmed their intentions to participate at the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest on 3 October 2013 and announced the organization of "Eurovizijos" dainų konkurso nacionalinė atranka, which would be the national final to select Lithuania's entry for Copenhagen.
Before Eurovision
"Eurovizijos" dainų konkurso nacionalinė atranka "Eurovizijos" dainų konkurso nacionalinė atranka (Eurovision Song Contest national selection) was the national final format developed by LRT in order to select Lithuania's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2014. The competition involved a 12-week-long process that commenced on 21 December 2013 and concluded with a winning song on 23 February 2014 and a winning artist on 1 March 2014. The 12 shows took place at the LRT studios in Vilnius and were hosted by Simona Nainė and Arūnas Valinskas. The shows were broadcast on LRT televizija, LRT Lituanica, and LRT Radijas, as well as online via the broadcaster's website lrt.lt. The final was also streamed online on the official Eurovision Song Contest website eurovision.tv.
Format The Lithuanian broadcaster overhauled the format of the national final from that of previous years. The 2014 competition consisted of 12 shows and involved artists competing independently from songs, potentially being paired with any of the songs that were selected for the competition. The rules stated that composers were required to agree to the condition that their song may be offered to an artist they did not originally write the song for. The first show was a jubilee concert, where 15 of the 20 competing artists participated in a celebration of past Lithuanian Eurovision songs, and no elimination took place. From the second to tenth shows, the artists performed covers that related to the theme of that particular show and the potential Eurovision songs. The second and third show consisted of ten artists each and five were eliminated. During each of the fourth to tenth shows, one artist was eliminated, and the remaining three artists advanced in the competition. Starting from the fifth show, the 16 potential Eurovision songs competed on a weekly basis and a total of 13 songs were eliminated following the tenth show, leaving three songs remaining. The eleventh show was the competition's semi-final, where only the winning song was selected from the remaining three songs, while the twelfth show was the final, where the winning artist-song combination was selected from the remaining three artists. The format of the competition was originally set to take place over a ten-week period, where four artists would participate in the final; however, an additional two elimination shows were held after LRT experienced success in the ratings with the elimination shows.
The results of each of the 12 shows were determined by the 50/50 combination of votes from a jury panel and public televoting. The jury votes in all shows consisted of a combination of a Lithuanian jury panel and an international jury panel. From the second show to the semi-final, the members of the Lithuanian panel were required to come to a consensus in order to assign one set of points, which were added to the international panel results. During each show, each member of the international panel assigned points in a descending order with the highest score for their favourite and the lowest score for their least favourite, while the Lithuanian panel assigned a score from 1 to 10 to each artist from the second to the fifth shows and points based on ranking starting from the sixth show. In the final, the Lithuanian and international panels voted together, with each member awarding one set of points based on ranking. The public could vote through telephone and SMS voting, and the ranking developed by both streams of voting was converted to points from 1-8, 10 and 12 and assigned based on the number of competing artists in the respective show. Ties in the elimination shows and the semi-final were decided in favour of the entry that received the most votes from the public, while in the final, a tie would be decided in favour of the entry that was awarded the most points by the jury.
Competing artists and songs On 2 October 2013, LRT opened two separate submission forms: one for artists and another for songwriters to submit their songs. The submission deadline for both applications concluded on 15 November 2013. On 28 December 2013, LRT announced the 20 artists selected for the competition. Among the artists was previous Lithuanian Eurovision contestant Sasha Song, who represented Lithuania in 2009. The 16 potential Eurovision songs selected from 106 submissions received were announced for listening and voting on 12 January 2014.
Artist and song progress in the shows
Artists Artist Show 2 Show 3 Show 4 Show 5 Show 6 Show 7 Show 8 Show 9 Show 10 Show 11(Semi-final) Show 12(Final) Vilija Matačiūnaitė 1st 6th 5th 1st 5th 5th 1st 3rd rowspan=3 1st Mia 1st 2nd 4th 2nd 6th 2nd 2nd 1st 2nd Vaidas Baumila 2nd 1st 7th 4th 4th 4th 4th 2nd 3rd Monika Linkytė 3rd 3rd 2nd 5th 2nd 1st 3rd 4th Eliminated (Show 10) Martynas Kavaliauskas 2nd 5th 1st 7th 3rd 3rd 5th Eliminated (Show 9) Ieva Zasimauskaitė 4th 4th 3rd 3rd 1st 6th Eliminated (Show 8) VIG Roses 4th 7th 6th 6th 7th Eliminated (Show 7) Justinas Lapatinskas 5th 9th 8th 8th Eliminated (Show 6) Kristina Radžiukynaitė 5th 8th 9th Eliminated (Show 5) Aistė Pilvelytė 3rd 10th Eliminated (Show 4) Pop Ladies 6th Eliminated (Show 3) Gintė Sičiūnaitė 7th Eliminated (Show 3) Soliaris 8th Eliminated (Show 3) Neringa Šiaudikytė 9th Eliminated (Show 3) Tadas Vilčinskas 10th Eliminated (Show 3) Julija Jegorova 6th Eliminated (Show 2) Jurijus Veklenko 7th Eliminated (Show 2) Sasha Song 8th Eliminated (Show 2) Aleksandra Metalnikova 9th Eliminated (Show 2) Juozas Butnorius 10th Eliminated (Show 2)
Songs Song Songwriter(s) Show 7 Show 8 Show 9 Show 10 Show 11(Semi-final) "Attention" Vilija Matačiūnaitė, Viktoras Vaupšas 1st 2nd 1st 1st 1st "Take a Look at Me Now" Aidan O'Connor, Christian Schneider, Sara Biglert 8th 7th 5th 2nd 2nd "It's All About a Boy" Alison Ellul, Aidan O'Connor, Elton Zarb 9th 9th 7th 3rd 3rd "Worlds Apart" Georgios Kalpakidis, Yaron Malachi 4th 6th 3rd 4th Eliminated (Show 10) "Blowing Out Cobwebs" Rafael Artesero 1st 1st 2nd 5th Eliminated (Show 10) "Dying" Edgaras Lubys 3rd 3rd 3rd 5th Eliminated (Show 10) "It's Not Too Late" Aidan O'Connor, Christian Schneider, Sara Biglert 11th 10th 7th 5th Eliminated (Show 10) "Let's Share That Love Tonight" Phillippe Germain 7th 3rd 6th 8th Eliminated (Show 10) "You Found Me" Aidan O'Connor, Christian Schneider, Sara Biglert, Camilla Moller, Karin Wannback 6th 8th 9th Eliminated (Show 9) "Is This the Way (You Want Me)" Aidan O'Connor, Christian Schneider, Sara Biglert, Kenny Leckremo 4th 3rd 10th Eliminated (Show 9) "Breakaway" Ylva Persson, Linda Persson 12th 11th Eliminated (Show 8) "Last Date" Dmitri Šavrov 9th 12th Eliminated (Show 8) "Silent Tears" Jonas Gladnikoff, Natasha Turner, Ylva Persson, Linda Persson 13th Eliminated (Show 7) "In the Rain" Aidan O'Connor, Christian Schneider, Sara Biglert, Madeleine Jangklev 14th Eliminated (Show 7) "One" Aidan O'Connor, Christian Schneider, Sara Biglert, Erik Grönwall 15th Eliminated (Show 7) "New Beginning" Aidan O'Connor, Christian Schneider, Sara Biglert, Madeline Jangklev 16th Eliminated (Show 7)
Jury members The Lithuanian jury panel consisted of four members in the elimination shows and the semi-final, and two members in the final. The international jury panel in all shows consisted of three members: Brandon Stone (German music producer and composer), Valerij Prosvirov (Russian producer and record label director) and Liselott Björk (Swedish singer and vocal coach). +Lithuanian jury members by show Jury member Elimination shows Semi-final Final Occupation(s) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10Adrija Čepaitė rowspan="10" actressDarius Užkuraitis musicologist, LRT Opus directorDeivydas Zvonkus composerEdmundas Seilius opera singerIeva Prudnikovaitė-Pitrėnė opera singer Jurga Šeduikytė singer-songwriter Lauras Lučiūnas producerRamūnas Zilnys music reviewerSigutė Stonytė opera singerVytenis Pauliukaitis director
Shows Elimination shows The ten elimination shows of the competition aired between 14 December 2013 and 15 February 2014 and featured the twenty competing artists. In the first four shows, the artists performed covers that related to the theme of that particular show: past Lithuanian Eurovision songs in the jubilee concert, past Eurovision songs in the second show, Lithuanian hit songs in the third show, and worldwide hit songs in the fourth show. No elimination took place during the jubilee concert, while the second and third show each featured ten artists and the bottom five were eliminated. One artist was eliminated in each of the fourth and fifth shows and the remaining eight artists in the competition performed the potential Eurovision songs starting from the sixth show. The artists each performed one song in the sixth and seventh shows and two songs between the eighth to tenth shows, and one artist was eliminated per show.
For the ninth elimination show, LRT opted to delay the announcement of the results until 10 February 2014 after conducting an investigation in regards to voting fraud. On 10 February, LRT announced that the televote score for Martynas Kavaliauskas had been reduced from 1,332 to 655 as it was discovered that a mobile operator was inflating Kavaliauskas' votes. This ultimately led to the elimination of Kavaliauskas from the competition as he ranked last by both the jury vote and the public vote.