esctoday.com earlier announced that Lithuania is changing pre-selection format to select it's song for the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest. The Lithuanian national broadcaster (LRT) has today announced the names that will fight for the ticket to Moscow in the Lietuvos Dainu Daina (Song for Lithuania) competition.
In 2008 LRT received about 80 songs to compete in Lithuanian national pre-selection, however so far only 30 singers have applied for the pre-selection for 2009. Many of the singers have sent demo versions of their songs which are perceived as low quality. That's why LRT extented the deadline time to send the songs in untill Friday 5th December.
Only songs written by Lithuanian composers were welcome to participate in pre-selection. According to Jonas Vilimas,Head of the Lithuanian delegation, these are the singers who applied to participate in Lietuvos Dainu Daina:
- Bix (Member of the band Saulius Urbonavicius "Samas" was one of LT United members at the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 in Athens)
- 69 Danguje(One of the band membersKarina Kryskorepresented Lithuania at theEurovision Dance Contest 2008 in Glasgow)
- Sokoledas
- Fuego
- Blogos mergaites
- N.E.O. (Lithuanian NF 2004, 2005, 2006)
- Laiptai (Lithuanian NF 2008)
- Funny Beat (Lithuanian NF 2008)
- Auguste (Lithuanian NF 2006, 2007, 2008)
- Stano (Lithuanian NF 2002 as a member of "Delfinai")
- Ruta Sciogolevaite (Lithuanian NF 1999, 2004, 2007)
- Donatas Montvydas (Winner of"Slavensky bazar 2008" festival in Belarus)
- Irena Starosaite
- Zilvinas Zvagulis
- Milano (Lithuanian NF 2002as a member of "Kosmo")
- Merunas (Lithuanian"Pop Idol" winner)
- Aiste Pilvelyte (Lithuanian NF veteran: 1999, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008)
- Ruslanas Kirilkinas (Finnish "Pop Idol" finalist)
- Erica Jennings (Lead singer of "Skamp" which participated at the Eurovision Song Contest 2001 in Copenhagen)
