SAYF - Santissimo

He came close to winning the seventy-sixth Sanremo Festival with what remains, at least for this writer, the best song put forward at the Ariston, ending up losing out only to the terminally watered-down Sal Da Vinci, back in competition after being excluded the previous year, just in time to turn the clock back twenty years and land somewhere between a cheesy wedding reception and Mara Venier's very comfortable armchair.
However much "Tu mi piaci tanto" might recall the sprightlier Silvestri of his early days, Sayf still brought a touch of genuine freshness to an event that's musically ever more mediocre and by now as predictable as a Giorgia song. And the references to Cannavaro and Tenco alone are enough to catch you off guard, if only for a moment, regardless of the merits of the little village-fete march that essentially forms the core of the track.

With the first Sanremo wrapped up in the best possible way, twenty-seven-year-old Sayf, born Adam Sayf Viacava, debuts with an album, “Santissimo”, anticipated even by those who had no idea who he was before he appeared on the Ariston stage as a likeable outsider, all "mum I love you so much" and braided hair.
Once you get past the initial shock of a cover that's kitsch to say the least, the songs roll by one after another, raising hopes that another small miracle might eventually arrive. Amid reggaeton rhythms more predictable than a Haaland goal in the Champions League, bamboo joints used as a metaphor even a newborn would grasp, "five grams in my balls", "designer shoes" and "knock-off tracksuits", Sayf sings about his Liguria, but also about precarity and the luxury life he craves, perhaps while kicking a Super Santos ball along the pavement. So much so that "Boutique" ends up being the best moment of the bunch, thanks not only to the lyrics but also to the flamenco guitar lightly underpinning it and a rhythm as simple as it is effective.

Unfortunately, there's also a bucketful of hackneyed, well-worn logbook diary entries, and pop sounds flaunted by just about everyone in Italy over the last decade. Fair enough to reference the tragic G8 too, within the stream of consciousness aired in "Perché piango", a duet with Kid Yugi, just as the Maghrebi-tinged beat driving "Bratz", sung with Nerissima Serpe, works well too — another sharp episode on a record that swings between highs and lows.
But setting aside a few good ideas, what's the point of opening your debut, right after an intro, with a song, "Ricordi", that sounds like it was written just to get it out of the way, and on top of that alongside Geolier, who rattles off yet another angry-street-kid rant (against whom exactly remains, of course, a mystery to this day), or of dropping, right at the centre of a track, a needlessly varnished guitar solo into what could have been a decent ballad, as happens on the title track?

In short, Sayf brings things into focus while stepping in it with one foot and picking a flower with the other. He plays the 90s pop singer-songwriter, guitar-in-hand à la Simone ("Parlar d'amore"), and ends up winning you over when he takes Spanish-tinged steps ("Princesa"), with beach-ready choruses that go down well. Yet as soon as he tries playing the cursed rapper again, as with his friend Tedua on "F.I.$.", he becomes terribly dull and bland once more.
The young musician must therefore decide which side he's on: the nauseating melting pot of Italian rap, or alone on the Ligurian seafront with a guitar, gazing at the horizon, "alongside the boy who's dreaming", as he sings in "Non c'è".

Granted, you forgive him pretty much everything, even when he apes some random Paolo Belli on "Randa Baraonda": what really matters is that he doesn't put on the guise of a manufacturer of cheap, predictable bars.
“Santissimo” is, in the end, a messy debut that's nonetheless decent enough overall, with some meaningful hints of the future potential of a talent that's far from raw, but simply still waiting to be set in the right form(at).   

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02/10/2026