Andrius Pojavis—Lithuania’s Eurovision 2013 contestant—has released a new single called “Play Your Game”. As you’d expect, it is much more acoustic and indie-rock than the most recent offerings by fellow Eurovision alums Margaret Berger and Tooji. It stands out in another big way. The video is entirely homemade.

It’s only natural that it reflect Andrius’ quirky nature. Here’s the play-by-play. It starts out with Andrius biking his way across a road in the Lithuanian countryside. After a somewhat forced crash, he shows off his wet hair, an equally damp jacket and a sweatshirt which says “Land of Freedom” in the colors of the American flag. He decides to rough it out in the Lithuanian countryside like some sort of Baltic Daoist, writing lyrics and walking about absent-mindedly. Things get a little crazy. He jumps off some hay, finds a fire in the middle of a dirt road, and fans the flames. (With all this strange behavior, you might think he was hanging out with Amaury Vassili ahead of his recent drug arrest). Eventually he leaves the Lithuanian hobo lifestyle behind him and bikes back to society, leaving this fire for the next Lithuanian indie-rock artist with Eurovision aspirations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOk15GXXAq8

The production quality isn’t exactly top-notch. I have taken videos of similar quality with an iPhone 4s! Although he could have put a little more editing effort into it, I am actually quite pleased with the pedestrian approach. In these times of austerity it’s on-trend to keep it simple….and to keep it real. Andrius’ unrelenting love of metaphors appears again. His “Something” video featured Yin and Yang. “Play Your Game” is supposed to represent going back to nature or something like that. (Seriously, it’s like a secondary school literature class. You feel like you should be unpacking some symbol of the power struggles of 1900s New Orleans Creole culture). If he wanted to convey some symbolism, he could have made it a little more obvious. All I see in this video is a very confused and somewhat adorable Andrius.

So, if I had to rate this: the song gets 7.3/10, the video gets 5/10. It’s poorly made, but it’s kind of appealing in that way.

Francheska contributed this report from the United States. Follow her on Twitter at @FranRants. You can also keep up-to-date with the latest Eurovision news and gossip by liking our Facebook page

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Arianna
Arianna
10 years ago

So ridiculous 😛 Now that the SRF video portal is open for Switzerland, I could see something like this fitting right in hahaha! Though after a few listens, the song isn’t really all that bad.