Netherlands – Treble, “Amambanda”
Netherlands is awful and NOS should consider doing us a favour and withdrawing like they promised in 2005. This song has the potential to do very well, however – it is staged virtually exactly like the National Songfestival was – very drably – and very, well, predictably I am afraid. The girls do look good, but, again, exactly like the National Final. Treble – Caroline Hoffman, Djem van Dijk and Niña van Dijk – won the Dutch selection with “Amambanda”, but NOS are not going to be that impressed when the scores come out.
Retrospectively, that prediction was not far off: performing seventeenth in the 2006 semi-final, immediately before Lithuania, Treble received 22 points and finished twentieth of the 23 entries, failing to qualify for the final.
Lithuania – LT United, “We Are The Winners”
They are so not the winners of anything. It will, however, possibly get the pissed votes of Europe – that’s its only hope of getting anywhere. LRT really must stop experimenting and try to win the contest – or at least get out of the Semi Final. It has minimalist choreography that consists of the big lad walking around the stage and doing not a lot of anything really. This song, if one can call it that, has the power of nothing but, and it is a big but, it is three minutes of nothing, not pretending to be anything else. Careful, Europe.
That was the contemporary view of LT United’s deliberately tongue-in-cheek, football-terrace-style chant, built around the claim that Lithuania would win Eurovision. The group, assembled for the contest and including Andrius Mamontovas, Saulius Urbonavičius and Viktoras Diawara, performed eighteenth in the semi-final, immediately after the Netherlands. Against the odds – and against this review – “We Are The Winners” qualified in fifth place with 163 points, then finished sixth in the grand final with 162 points. It was Lithuania’s best Eurovision result at the time.
