The song ‘Brividi’ (Chills) by Mahmood and Blanco, a larger-than-life ballad with rapped sections that celebrates love in all its combinations and expressions, won the Sanremo Song Festival early this Sunday . In this way, the Italian artist with an Egyptian father Mahmood, who already came second in Eurovision in 2019 with ‘Soldi’, will once again represent Italy in the European music contest. An achievement reached by the two young singers after having stood out in a particularly successful edition of Sanremo, number 72, which this year it broke audience records, with 11.3 million viewers -many of them young people- at the final gala, and an audience share of 60.5%, the highest since 1995.
Mahmood, 29, and Blanco, 18, whose song had already swept the top spot on the most popular charts all week and finally got 51.8% of the vote on the last night, managed to prevail over the veterans Elisewhich came second (26.3%) with ‘O forte sei tu‘Y Giani Morandi (21.9%), who came third with ‘Apri tutte le porte’. A victory, that of the two young artists, which has also been interpreted as “a sign of renewal” before the older generation, as Pietro Raffa, an expert in new trends, has opined.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te236EDr_-k
The truth is that, although there were stale moments as usually happens every year, the 2022 Sanremo festival was not the usual Italian popular music musical event, but the generation Z edition, the one after the millennials. Live on television and through social networks -including Tik Tok-, These young people have massively attended monologues against homophobia, songs about the injustices suffered by migrants, metaphors about toxic love and melodies with feminist and LGBTI claims, without missing the mention of the transformations that the pandemic brought. Hence, the festival ended up being a juicy affair for television talk shows as well.
Spanish disappointment
Music genres have also been in line with the wild and globalized times we live in. Hip hop, urban and indie music have predominated, although the older generation of singers has not given up on more traditional musical compositions.
For its part, the Spanish Ana Mena, also a participant, disappointed. In her first appearance, on Tuesday, the singer from Estepona came last with her song with Latin touches ‘Duecentomila ore’, and her losing streak continued. On Thursday, the day of her second performance, already accompanied by accusations of plagiarism -due to alleged similarities with a song by a well-known Italian singer-songwriter-, she also failed to stand out, and with it her dream of competing in Eurovision vanished. Instead, that day, attention was focused on the appearance of Drusilla Foer, a transvestite who co-hosted the festival on the third night.
Excited
A separate matter has been, instead, the appearance of the Maneskinsthe quartet whose jump to the international circuits -the victory of Eurovision, before landing in the United States- began precisely with their triumph at the Sanremo festival in 2021. Damiano, the singer, who appeared with an anal ‘plug’ hanging from the belt, he burst into tears, moved by the return to the stage that first celebrated him.
The contest also served to hand over the baton to Eurovision, which this year will be held in Turin until May 14 and which, as announced in Sanremo, will have the Italian as presenters Alessandro Cattelan already the best known Laura Pausini and Mika, both very popular in Europe. Mahmood and Blanco will also be there.
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seven countries
Along with Italy, there are seven countries that have already chosen their representative in Eurovision: Albania (‘Sekret’, by Ronela Hajati), Bulgaria (‘Intention’, by Intelligent Music Project), Spain (‘SloMo’, by Chanel), Moldova (‘Trenuletul’, by Zdob și Zdub & Frații Advahov), Montenegro (‘Breathe (Unforgivable’, by Vladana Vučinić) and Czech Republic (‘Lights off’, by We Are Domi)
Reference-www.elperiodico.com