New old Sanremo: what kind of Festival it will be

The question is more than legitimate and has been hovering more or less since the night of February 10, since the final moment of the edition of the last year of the five-year period signed Amadeus: what will the new Sanremo festival be like? Or, to put it bluntly, it will continue Charles Conti Will the line of modernization set by his predecessor or his artistic direction represent a return to the past? Continuity or restoration?

Let’s try to understand, deciphering the first signals coming from the new host, who is not new because he boasts a hat-trick in the years 2015, 2016, 2017, and therefore knows well the complicated mechanisms that converge in the festival machine.

First sign: shorter durations, and so far, apart from registering a general relief of the public and professionals, not much could be deduced. We can understand something more from the presentation of the new regulation.

There will be 24 big names in the competition, instead of the 30 that Amadeus had reached, and this is consistent with the declaration of greater sobriety, but the real novelty is the reinstatement of the young artists’ competition, with four artists, and the proclamation of a winner of this section.

It is already in itself a return to the past, but also something more. Conti wants to reiterate a classic differentiation between big names and newcomers that in recent editions had been completely lost, and indeed was one of the glories of the old management, with effects that in some cases bordered on the comical.

When the big names were announced, there was, by now, a certain amount of confusion on the part of the general public who were completely unaware of some of the chosen names, but even among the insiders there were moments of doubt and a quick refresher was needed before expressing judgments.

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edited by the Entertainment editorial team

July 19, 2024

Now we must assume that a good part of the 24 big names will be made up of at least more familiar names, read “more classic”, but it is also true that part of the revolution brought by Amadeus is so to speak unavoidable, it is a process that Conti will not be able to ignore, or at least not entirely.

Sanremo has become a fundamental event in the music market. The songs that go to the festival are those that dominate the charts for months, they are the songs that are played on the radio, Sanremo “is” the market, and going back would be very difficult, as well as wrong. Disappointing this expectation would lead to a strong protest from record companies and management.

It is likely that Conti will seek a line of balance on this, he will certainly want to bring a share of classicism back to the festival, but he will have to mediate with the new rules of supply and demand that now guide the world of music. In other words, we will hardly see gender transgressions, provocations, excesses of trap and autotune on stage, but there will have to be something musically sensible.

Another signal, more difficult to interpret: Friday night, the night of covers, the most loved by Italians, is eliminated from the vote count, it competes on its own and will proclaim a winner, but the votes will not be added to those of the other days of the week. The meaning is clear.

In recent years it has often happened that the outcome of the cover night has had an impact, sometimes significantly, on the final result and to many this seemed unfair, given that a new song is presented at the festival and it is the one that is judged in the end.

So, will it be continuity or restoration? The truth is that the difficulty of the task that awaits Conti is above all one: it will necessarily have to be both. Impossible? After 74 years of festivals in Sanremo nothing is impossible.