“A million roses like sentiments” – Monika Liu sings of fading memories in the “Sentimentai” lyrics

Fresh off a top ten result last year, Lithuania are here to keep a hot streak going. This time, the Baltic nation are taking us from the discoteque to the minimalist electronic scene. Enter Monika Liu and “Sentimentai”.

Scroll down to read the “Sentimentai” lyrics

Lithuania in Eurovision 2022: Monika Liu “Sentimentai”

Monika Liubinaitė is a veteran of the Lithuanian music scene. She began her music career aged five, and won Dainų dainelė aged fifteen in 2004. She studied music at Klaipėda University and Berklee College of Music in Boston, United States, before moving to London and eventually settling in Vilnius.

She released her first album in 2015 and has since gone on to release two more. In addition to her music career, Monika is a judge on The Voice of Lithuania and The Masked Singer Lithuania. She is on record as saying that she aspired to compete at Eurovision for a while, but was waiting for the right time. She won the national selection Pabandom iš naujo! 2022 by impressing both the televote and the jury, earning 12 points from both.

What do the “Sentimentai” lyrics mean?

“Sentimentai” is written by Monika Liu herself and is the first song entirely in Lithuanian to compete at Eurovision since the country’s debut in 1994.

The song begins with Monika singing about the feelings of returning memories, “Knock knock knock, at night it’s knocking at my heart… a ghost, accompanied by memories”. She then describes the bad memories of her ex-partner, “Why are you laughing like a clown at my glassy eyes?”

In the chorus, she describes being tortured by these memories, “Moments are spinning in a circle in my head, they’re running where you are”. But these memories are, thankfully, fading, “A million roses like sentiments are drowning in the sea of clouds”.

The second verse goes more in-depth with the theme of fading memories, “That’s it – he’s never coming back, he arrived as black foam”. The “black foam” is a reference to a Lithuanian story of a woman waiting for her lover, who will appear as white foam if he’s alive or black foam if he’s dead. She also references the resort town of Nida in southern Lithuania, “I remember standing in the middle of the dunes of Nida, waving to a seagull so far, far away”.

The metaphors of the song are complex and beautiful. Whether or not the Eurovision viewership will be able to understand the song or not, we should still appreciate how deeply poetic the song is. Here’s hoping it will find more than a few fans in Turin this May!

“Sentimentai” lyrics – Monika Liu (Lithuania Eurovision 2022)

Written and composed by: Monika Liu

Do you appreciate the lyrics of “Sentimentai”? How do you think Monika Liu will fare in Turin? Let us know below!