Werloc

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

@tuniscof is right, that would just be an exact copy of the Open format. We should at least then represent countries that are unrepresented at TISC to make it somewhat different.

Another lighthearted edition could be that all of the registered nations get randomly drawn to represent one of the registered countries. You can't vote for the country you were asigned and your own country.

I think I am legally obliged to say nothing more on this matter, for competitive integrity

Don't know if they're a thing in Lithuania, but yeah, if they like, you know, end up in TISC, or something, then I might have already heard them

Had no idea that The Academic were from Ireland

I'm just throwing around random ideas. To be bluntly honest, I'm not overall too excited for another contest this Summer, because I am relatively happy with the breaks that we have between the two. It's fair to say that if we had a contest in Summer, I would be drastically less excited for the contest that's going to happen in The Netherlands. So no, I don't need any sort of special contest catered for me, I'm just expanding the sea of options with my thoughts.

Seriously, my second proposition would involve absolutely everybody, because your all time favourite can even be a last place in the contest, it doesn't have to be a previous winner or anything. I'm not trying to isolate anyone, because I clearly mentioned the problem of representation and that everyone should be okay with it, when I proposed it. So you making fun of my idea is very shallow, I didn't say anything about yours.

If we want to save some time with song selection, we could do this idea. TISC Allstars The Top 3 from all 14 editions are thrown in to battle amongst each other for who is the best Totallympics song. There would be 42 entries, so nothing too crazy yet, but more than enough for an intriguing final. And would also be a funny spinoff edition before the 15th TISC milestone. Of course, that is something that everyone should agree to, because of course, not every country is going to be represented so there would be a lack of diversity, regarding the fact that yesterday we had our first Asian top 3, for example. Another spin-off-y idea could be that every user has the chance to select their all time favourite TISC song and throw it into the competition and it wouldn't matter which position that song won in the contest.

Well, there's always enough of a crowd that don't vote for songs such as that simply based on principle. Billie would probably not be any lower than 3rd, but might face the same antagonisation that Shawn faced today and some other artists in previous contests We're in this cycle of "Why can't UK and USA send their best representatives" and then we don't vote for them, because it's "unfair" for smaller countries that can't present a global artist or it's overplayed on the radio etc. Totallympics is fairly indecisive in this regard, because some global artists slipped through without any fuss and even won contests, so you actually never know how everyone is going to react in that particular year.

Makes you wonder if our future generations will compete in TISC after our retirement, doesn't it? If some Lithuanian representative in 2083 gives 12 points to some sort of Trap song, I promise, I'll rise from my grave.