Werloc

Someone please say something about TISC, the Corona thread is alive again

and here in Lithuania we're not too big on conspiracies, I guess, because the only stories that we have are the general updates of Covid in our country, updates of Covid from border countries, health specialists discussing the measures that should be taken to defuse the spread of the virus, a lot about economical repercussions and nothing about bats, labs, bio-weapons etc. The new Resident Evil remake is already released, don't need to hype it up more.

Are we writing the script for the next big Netflix show now?

Well, having 100mil plays on ONE song on Spotify already means that she is fucking famous between the teens. Can't imagine a lot of older people listening to her, but she is definitely at that place where she can coast with her career even as a digital artist. Unless of course she doesn't write her own music and has 0 writing credits. Then she's making a lot of money for other people

OMG. Find An Island is such a BOP, I can't

You got to be kidding me, because I was about to go for a kiwi joke

I honestly thought it was pop

Okay, I've found one song that I'll probably use for TISC when the opportunity arrives. But now I feel bored, having mapped out Lithuanian entries for 2020 and 2021 already

Here you go, this is actually the FOJE song that reached the biggest commercial success in Lithuania. It's 7 minutes long, so you could even say that I gave you two songs. And if you need a translation, hit me up through private messages

But didn't we settle on Jazz for 2020?

Yeah, explaining this contest to an outside source is a very traumatising experience, I still cringe to this day

Wanderer wouldn't put a foot into a committee with me, now that I gave 12 points to "Maple boy".

I think I'd need somewhat about 500.000 streams on Spotify for me to get back the money that I actually put in into the recording process of the song. Some of you might think that it's an unsustainable business and you'd be absolutely right, because at the moment, I am not getting my money back. Fair to say that I'm investing nearly everything that I'm making, because I'm not yet at that stage where I can organise my own concerts, because that's where the money is now, if you're an artist. So I survive through: playing private shows/gigs at cafes with my guitarist, releasing music as a solo artist, private shows and bigger venues + TV with Original Copy, back vocalists for three of the biggest Lithuanian artitst at the moment and songwriting credits, that makes a few Euros here and there

Funnily enough, everyone that ever won TISC were never lower than my 13th place (regards to Ireland, which surprise win dropped me out of the committee ) I don't yet know how I'd feel if there was a winner outside of my top 30, for example

The labels with their connections and marketing schemes. Good luck to all of the independent artists out there

What if I tell you that my producers often went against my wishes whilst doing the arrangement, because they wanted to commercialise my music more? There's actually this one song, it's at a demo state at the moment, but if I actually release it in 2020 (the virus is fucking up my entire life to an amazing extent), I might consider entering it in TISC, because it's single-handedly the song that I'm most proud of in my 14 years of songwriting.

The punk / alternative and rock scenes really really suffered in the last 10 years. Indie although used that to its advantage and has become a lot more popular in the last decade. Soul and Jazz took a backseat as well, because R&B became more marketable. Hip-Hop devolved into Trap and that's how it survived. A lot of the genres suffered from the fact that recording live instruments is no longer a very common practice, because it's less cost-efficient than just one person playing around with a computer, having the entire world of sounds at his/her fingertips.

There is actually a lot of very good pop around from the last decade, it's just not as consumed as the trashy pop, so you need to put in more effort to find it, because it tends to not find you

You'd like my songwriting. Mine is mostly about me breaking my own heart

I think that Enrique Iglesias has ruined Spanish songs for me for my entire existence And the resurgance of reggaeton is the death of me (The US Billboard charts with all that lovely trap and reggaeton music, I'm looking at you) Never in my life have I listened to a genre and thought that you could literally drop a lawsuit for copyright on any song, because they're all the same.

It's still puzzling, because the difference of quality of those two songs was very little, so I'd expect people to either vote for both, or for neither. And not one over the other

I thought it would be a huge brawl between Canada and the US with a first time non-European winner. China, really a huge surprise for me that came out of nowhere. I lost it somewhere at 18-22nd place together with Australia, Argentina and India in my voting. Another thing I did not expect was the success of the Spanish language songs over the Portuguese language songs. I was definitely strongly in favour of the latter. What was really fun for me is that my reserves: Hungary, Indonesia, Sweden and Norway all found themselves up in the top 10. Immediately made me feel less bad, when I couldn't give them that one point And my final surprise was that my actual last place and the only song that I ranked with 1 instead of 2 at the first stage of my voting slid in the first half of the scoreboard, so I guess what do I even know about music

Now I can never go back even if I actually try. In 2017 O: I wanted to experiment by throwing in older Lithuanian music, because I never went with our old music, since I felt that it wouldn't be received well. (was right) In 2018 A: Went with a song that I really enjoyed that year, but knew that Saulės Kliošas was not very favoured to do well at TISC, seeing as they were the first Lithuanian entry back in 2013 and didn't do well. In 2018 O: Went for my favourite childhood singer Jurga that I wanted to introduce for a long time. Had a hard time choosing the song of hers that I wanted to present, the one I chose had an English version as well, but I went with Lithuanian. 13th place at least I was close. In 2019 A: Yolo'd with my own song, didn't think I'd be on the first side of the table, so that's nice. In 2019 O: Went with a huge Baltic hit and wanted to show some of our indie rock scene as well and it went worse than anticipated. This edition: I carefully tried to pick out a Jazzu song from her album and thought it was an easy top 10, joke's on me then Thank you for your curse @Wanderer

Ah, the glory days

The best song on this list is definitely the one from Sufjan Stevens, I've spent a lot of hours listening to his music