AGI – La second night of the 73rd edition of the San Remo Festival allows us to listen to the second tranche of songs in the competition. Fabulous Colapesce and Dimartinobene Tananai, Madame, Lazza e Rosa Chemical. Maybe something more was expected from Georgia e Article 31but the songs are valid. Fedez in freestyle takes off a few pebbles from the shoe, the moment karaoke is entrusted to the trio Morandi / Al Bano / Ranieri, bravo Hard Angel.
Overall ranking: no surprises at the top with Mengoni in front of Colapesce and Dimartino; in the top five with good reason also Madame and Tananai. The Coma_Cose, Lazza (7), Rosa Chemical (9) and Leo Gassmann (11) are too low; the ballroom press room Last, one of the favourites, relegating him to tenth place. Correct decision.
Amadeus – Vote 6: With the boy from the Rai fiction who gives him the Napoli shirt, he establishes the classic conversation that makes you laugh at first and then ends up in a fight with his parents. Immediately after the performance of the Black Eyed Peas he calls a good-looking orchestral player to ask him a few questions, like the kids do on their graduation trip to Ibiza to hit on foreign girls. When Fedez assumes responsibility for freestyle he breathes a sigh of relief so heartfelt that the TV steams up.
Trio Morandi / Al Bano / Ranieri – Score 10: Not a project between three sacred monsters of our music but the brilliant plan of a villain who lives inside a mountain to conquer the world.
Fedez – Vote 10: We follow, support, applaud, vote, then pay, a countless number of characters who fight social battles with squirt guns and plastic swords. Almost never accomplishing anything. And then there’s Fedez, who says he’s doing something and then does it; that he uses the spaces granted off the net, which he could also exploit to put another two coins in his pocket, to provoke in an authentic way. Does he get anything in return? Yes. Well? Among other things, he who says he’s not a rapper places a technically very precise and incisive performance.
Will – “Stupid” – Score 4.5: The willingness to want to say something is appreciable, the incapacity to succeed is to be rejected. All too light, so teeny as to have a boy band effect, but alone.
Modà – “Let me go” – Score 5: Modà basically represent everything from which the indie revolution saved us. We always perceive this laminated pop, even when done sensibly, and this is the case, as weak, but above all miles away from anything that might interest us when listening to music. All didactic, simple, harmonious, square and without flashes.
SetHu – “Lost Causes” – Grade 5: The boy, despite remembering the disturbing villain of a Cohen brothers film, brings something on stage; unfortunately the piece he proposes would like to hammer but it doesn’t even touch you. He vaguely recalls the BLANCO style, but without the destruction of the scenography.
Article 31 – “A nice trip” – Grade 6: Article 31 choose to play the Sanremo card by showing their darker side, which is not necessarily the ugliest of the two available. “Un bel viaggio” is a moving piece, precisely because it is authentic, because it goes beyond the glitter, the green carpet, beyond the race, and there is a friend, or at least someone you’ve known for a very long time, who is offering you a nostalgic and engaging memory, because you were part of it too. Sure, dressed in white they look like the ghosts of what they once were, while still alive and well and fighting with us.
Lazza – “Ash” – Score 7: Here is the piece that will rock the radio and the charts, not only because Lazza takes the lead in any chart with any of his own sound emanations, but because he has the ear of a true musician. Indeed, “Cenere” is a very contemporary piece, therefore highly thought out, and he sings it a lot, with an almost unsettling precision in discipline; out of the text machismi typical of the rap universe, indeed, decided pop winks, in this sense also a crafty song. Lazza seems like someone who knows exactly where he will arrive, but he doesn’t say it, because he wants to surprise us. But he is already a nice surprise.
Giorgia – “Words said badly” – Score 6.5: Giorgia presents herself as she wants to be and not as everyone expected her to be. Hints of R&B, minimal, contemporary sounds, in short, all stuff of great value and built with great professionalism, but which in Italy nobody wants to hear, in the public it sounds like a fire alarm. The piece, on the other hand, is valid, because Giorgia is perhaps the most beautiful voice of Italian pop ever (and we are not forgetting anyone) and the work she is doing with maestro Big Fish is truly remarkable. And all this despite the fact that she has chosen the same outfit as the protagonist of an Indiana Jones film.
Colapesce and Dimartino – “Splash” – Vote 10: The best song of this edition of Sanremo. Colapesce and Dimartino are confirmed as authors of rare workmanship, the piece brings together irony and melancholy, offering raw and wonderful images. The refrain, that ingenious “Ma che mare?? But what sea?” it sounds like an outlet, like in the best songs, and it stays in your head indelibly. The greatest merit of the Amadeus Festivals, therefore of Amadeus, far beyond the numbers, the results, the data, is having given the Italian mainstream, so poor, miserable, of ideas, two like Colapesce and Dimartino.
Shari – “Selfish” – Score 6.5: Too bad for the considerable emotion that thins a truly excellent voice a bit, in that sense a little more warmth and a little less instability would have been useful, as well as avoiding presenting Stifler’s mother version. The piece is very interesting, listening to it again it will grow, engraved it will explode.
Madame – “Good in Evil” – Score 7.5: One of the best expressions of contemporary Italian music is Madame. To understand why, just listen to this piece, so furious, poetic, committed, fat; among other things, she is immense on stage. All perfect. Vax or no vax.
Levante – “Alive” – Vote 5.5: All quite inconsistent, the drama that the piece wants to tell is suffocated by an overly accentuated interpretation.
Tananai – “Tango” – Voto 8: The strength of this piece is to remember, if “Abissale” weren’t enough, that Tananai is an ironic character but endowed with his own effective poetics. “Tango” is poignant, it gets right where it has to, he sings it as he should, with his intoxicating sprecision.
Rosa Chemical – “Made in Italy” – Voto 7,5: Rosa Chemical displaces even those who expected the excess from him. This is because strong make-up, purple claws, tattoos on the face, riding crops, all the staging in short, represent only the appetizer of what then explodes in the music. Ironic, powerful, pulsating, engaging; even complex in certain points and certainly insightful in intent, but without ever passing it off as intellectualism. Excellent.
LDA – “If then tomorrow” – Grade 5: Soulless high school TV pop. Attention, the song spins, like stones when we make them jump in the water: two, three quick wheelies, four when you’re strong strong, before sinking and we will never see them again.
Paola and Chiara – “Furore” – Score 4.5: Such 90s stuff that we expect Pippo Baudo and Totò Schillaci to come out of the wings. The two sisters of Italian music, or at least of their apartment building, dressed like two disco balls, offer a 2.0 version of their incredibly irritating Milanese pop. By the way, if you put it on mute and look at their choreography (and dance enthusiasts have mercy on our souls), in sign language they say “We look young but by this time we’re usually already in our dressing gown and slippers. Just with the v”.
