Sanremo 2025

Even though five years of Amadeus's artistic direction have helped modernize both the contestants and the audience of the Sanremo Festival, the decision to take part in the most important music event on our peninsula remains a fraught one for artists outside the mainstream circuit. More than a few fear jeopardizing their credibility and consistency, worried that their fans might not understand joining an event that remains deeply nazional-popolare (Italy's own brand of populist mainstream entertainment). Over time, however, the list of independent-scene artists (can we still call them "alternative"?) who have decided to take the plunge and perform on the Ariston stage without compromising themselves has grown ever more distinguished. Sticking to just the last thirty years, I think of Bluvertigo and Subsonica, Mauro Ermanno Giovanardi, Marlene Kuntz and Afterhours (perhaps it was they who really changed everything), Daniele Silvestri, Motta and Zen Circus. The chance to have a three-minute song heard by the widest possible audience is decisive: there's no other way in Italy to glue more than twelve million viewers to their screens on a Tuesday night, in a world dominated by an ever-growing number of streaming platforms where you can find any kind of content at any time. More than twelve million people were tuned in to Rai1 on Tuesday, February 11th, the opening night of the 2025 Sanremo Festival, with a share worthy of a World Cup final.

Having established that competing doesn't necessarily have to chip away at one's artistic dignity (in some cases it doesn't even bring particular benefits, but that's another story), this year the "indie crowd" got to admire three fine entries: Lucio Corsi, Brunori Sas and Joan Thiele. Could we read this as a new way of being "indie" in the 2020s? Going to Sanremo not to express a desire to jump on the mainstream bandwagon, but to bring variety, to bring themselves, to try to change things from within.

Lucio Corsi walks away after just the first night with the Assomusica award (the Italian Association of Live Music Organizers and Producers) for best live performance by a "breakout" artist, plus the Mei prize (the Meeting of Independent Labels), which grants him the plaque for "Best Independent Artist." He then goes on to also win the Critics' Award named after Mia Martini and finishes second in the overall standings, behind winner Olly. A genuine triumph for a singer-songwriter whose purity goes straight to the heart, who, while giving out his televoting code on social media, urges people to vote for anyone at all, because in music it doesn't matter who wins. Lucio instantly wins everyone over with his personal blend of David Bowie and Ivan Graziani, presenting himself from the very first night as a kind of pocket guide to himself, wearing the same stage clothes he's had for years, which let him feel at ease even in a completely new setting. "I wanted to be tough," but even Thursday night's duet with Topo Gigio (which finishes second) lets first-time listeners get a faithful sense of both the character and the style. A genuine talent who, thanks to Sanremo, gains the visibility he deserves.

The Festival's 75th edition marks the return of artistic direction to the deeply tanned Carlo Conti. The Tuscan host proves as ever to have things firmly under control, keeping each night's running time within reasonable limits, and delivers a Festival that stands as the hyper-reassuring triumph of the idea of family, the affirmation of ordinariness — even with the Pope appearing via video on opening night to declare that music can be recognized as a tool for peace, and with just two lines from Simone Cristicchi enough to move the whole audience to tears.

For a closer look at the individual contestants, I'll refer you a little further down, with the report cards and comments curated by our editorial staff, but beyond the songs themselves (although during the Festival there was more talk about the buffed-up physiques of the male contestants and the silhouettes of Clara, Gaia and Elodie than about the actual music) and the outrageous number of co-hosts, this edition will go down in history for the hyper-rhythmic show put on by Jovanotti, for a renewed Damiano David paired up with Alessandro Borghi, for the other Maneskin, Victoria, diving into a Duran Duran set forty years after "Wild Boys", for Benigni, Tamberi and the kids from Teatro Patologico directed by Dario D'Ambrosio, and for Edoardo Bennato, who reminded everyone that in the end "they're just little songs". Our special applause goes to the perennially underappreciated orchestra, and to all the independent artists who, rather than staying holed up in underground limbo, showed that it's entirely possible to take on Italy's most daunting stage, bringing their true selves and their own music with them, without compromise and without losing their identity. And it took Dario Brunori (third in the general ranking, awarded Best Lyrics) to remind us of a great artist who left us only a few weeks ago: Paolo Benvegnù.

(Claudio Lancia)

The Report Cards

Now a fixture at Sanremo, in the past he's brought songs of varying degrees of conviction, at least when he really put his foot down, but this time around he comes out with a ballad that fully embraces the most diabetes-inducing Sanremo cliches, with mawkish swells of strings and a romantic lyric of rare banality ("Amore mio veramente, se non mi ami muoio giovane, ti chiamerò da un autogrill, tra cento vite o giù di lì"). Even his slurred delivery, more than a signature trait, is now a double-edged sword that comes across as a caricature of itself. One could also open a parenthesis on the state of mainstream Italian music today and the fact that singer-songwriters are disappearing. There's no longer room for artists capable of writing their own songs without the help of a depersonalizing assembly line: a track like this one took seven people to make.

Score: 4

(Federico Romagnoli)

Bresh's success is already something of a mystery, even more so than Olly's, and this Sanremo entry doesn't help matters. He's part of the "young people who seem old" quota, in fact bringing a song that harks back to traditional singer-songwriter fare, which he performs without overdoing it, unlike the aforementioned colleague, all breathless intensity. In his own way, he's the opposite of Cristicchi, sidestepping his struggling partner by saying he'll come back when he wants to get better. The truth is it flows by without leaving a mark, an average singer with an average song in an average edition. Sure, compared to Ultimo this is much better, and it deserves at least double the score.

For the covers night he performs three times with De André the father alongside De André the son, due to technical problems, jumping ahead of schedule and becoming a veteran of the Ariston stage.

Score: 4

(Antonio Silvestri)

Brunori Sas – "L'albero delle noci"

"Sanremo is my natural stage, everything that's been happening these past few months is a kind of training for the big moment when I'll toss chocolate wafers out to the delirious crowd. Actually, I already have the song ready, so, just like with schoolteachers, I'm just waiting to rack up enough points to move up the rankings and get tenure." That's what Brunori Sas told us sixteen years ago, back in the days of "Vol. Uno". Words that come in handy today, since the Calabrian singer-songwriter has finally made his debut at the Ariston. He did so at 47, with a smile plastered on his face ever since he found out he'd been picked. As if he were an Olly. Or one of the Jalisse. The song was written quite a while after 2009, since it's a dedication, in De Gregori-esque fashion, to his little daughter. Too bad that all that remains of the Roman singer-songwriter is a contrived impression. "Gli esami di maturità", as another great Roman singer-songwriter once sang, and guiding stars take over just before the string-driven chorus that brings him back to his oldest, most familiar dimension, that of "Vol. Uno" itself. What's missing, though, is that genuine, rough-edged, booming quid that back then made him a wonderfully adrift author, on the run from a stingy homeland that would have him make music into nothing but a proper, full-time job, always and forever.

Score: 5.5

(Giuliano Delli Paoli)

Clara – “Febbre”

She tries again, even more confident in her statuesque beauty… but things get worse when she tries to move, or, even worse, to dance. The track is a fast electro-pop number mixed with rap, alternating between two or three ideas, but the vocal performance is modest, the lyrics rather dull, the melody forgettable. Off the song she seems likable too, even funny. The only performance that gains something without volume: not a good sign. “The Sound Of Silence” (Simon & Garfunkel) with Il Volo is a painful moment to watch and listen to, cultural violence.

Score: 4

(Antonio Silvestri)

Coma_Cose – “Cuoricini”

It's basically a “Sarà perché ti amo 2.0”. So if you're a fan of Ricchi e Poveri, this might be for you, while those who hailed “Anima lattina” as a miracle back in the day will find this downward slide hard to swallow. There's really little else to say. Having abandoned any pretense of belonging to the intelligentsia of Italian indie-pop, the duo settles for prepackaged earworms and is probably hoping to hook TikTok (“Ma tu volevi solo cuoricini, cuoricini, pensavi solo ai cuoricini, cuoricini, stramaledetti cuoricini, cuoricini”). At this point it's worth drawing the obvious conclusion: maybe even “Anima lattina” wasn't the miracle everyone claimed it was at the time.

Score: 4

(Federico Romagnoli)

A victim, naturally, of the jeers from the Ariston's horny male contingent, she was elegant on stage, but the song, full of drawn-out vowel runs, often puts her in a tough spot. There's a beat you could dance to, and whenever she hints at dancing, all it takes is a shift of the hip for everything else to fade into the background. One might have expected something bolder, but instead the strings rein everything in, lending it, at most, a certain decadent, cinematic quality. It could have been a chance to set herself apart from the rest of the field, but instead she comes off a bit generic. She's more entertaining on cover night with Achille Lauro, where she turns into a panther, growls and winks at the audience, winning us over with a touch of playful self-irony.

Score: 5

(Antonio Silvestri)

He arrives on stage weighed down by gossip, with all eyes on him and the guns already loaded. The song, however, has its own expressive power: he manages to rap without a single misstep and to sing in a limited but less embarrassing way than others. With black contact lenses he finds the one truly memorable touch of the whole edition, a magnetic gaze impossible to ignore. It's utterly lacking in irony, an affliction shared by too many others, and it clearly turns anxiety and distress into spectacle, but at least there's none of the implicit moral blackmail found elsewhere. For the covers, he stages the pernicious sandwich-song trick: the original “Bella stronza” by Masini is conveniently purged of certain rape fantasies and euphemisms bordering on domestic violence, only to be stuffed with new rapped verses about a toxic relationship. In the end, Fedez comes out of it all strengthened, practically reborn: an absolute master at managing hype in today's media landscape, he turned out less dreadful than much of his recent catalogue.

Score: 5

(Antonio Silvestri)

In an interview given just a few days before the Festival began, Francesca Michielin was keen to point out how much her song would be influenced by the atmospheres of “Folklore”, the first of the two introspective indie-folk albums Taylor Swift made during the height of the pandemic. Listening to “Fango in paradiso”, however, it's hard to find any real point of contact with the American singer-songwriter's craft, aside from the subject matter: a love affair reaching its end. She ends the second performance, on Wednesday night, in tears: whether from getting too caught up in the story – evidently autobiographical – or from not having an Aaron Dessner by her side, a composer-arranger capable of elevating the singer's ideas to a more compelling, authoritative level, we don't know. What comes out instead is the usual crowd-pleasing crescendo, very much in the Sanremo mold, taking no particular risks, the kind we've heard thousands of times before. Michielin remains as lovely as ever, but – with all due respect to Raina and Simonetta – we hope she finds songwriters in the future who can further showcase the great potential of her voice. Which we all know so well.

Score: 6.5

(Claudio Lancia)

Francesco Gabbani – “Viva la vita”

Smiling more than ever, dressed as if he'd been booked for a slightly kitsch wedding, he's a concentrate of good vibes that quickly turns saccharine, the antithesis of the mopey tristicchi ballads. The song opens with a half-quote of "Knockin' On Heaven's Door", then he hams it up all the way through the lyrics, softens his vowels and turns everything into a river of uiua lua uita, winking at the camera, half-miming the words, treating it all like a piece of theatre, full of flailing arm gestures. But there's simply no song underneath it all, and he even struggles a bit on the high notes. Cloying. Lifetime malus for bringing children on stage like some second-rate Mr. Rain.

Score: 3.5

(Antonio Silvestri)

Gaia – “Chiamo io chiami tu”

It falls to Gaia to open the seventy-fifth edition of the Festival with “Chiamo io, chiami tu”, a song that, in intent, seems to have come straight out of the perfect music producer's handbook: a light, catchy chorus, a title recalling summer hits, and a warm, carefree voice. But something must have gone wrong with the proportions of the ingredients. The chorus is a bit too light but not quite catchy enough, while the lyrics are memorable only for the irritation they leave behind. In the end, though, Gaia gets exactly what she wanted from the Festival: a showcase that launches her toward her next radio adventures. Her cover-night performance was far better, where the duet with Toquinho gave her a genuine musical moment.

Score: 4.5

(Fabio Ferrara)

Giorgia – “La cura per me”

She no longer has the voice she once had. No point beating around the bush. She sings beautifully, of course. But she's lost the soul drive she had in the '90s. The song is a Sanremo ballad tailor-made to win, powered by an "oh, oh, oh, oh, oooh" chorus in typical Giorgia style that by now feels utterly stale. "La cura per me" is the classic bittersweet little tune, worn threadbare over the centuries in the alleyways of the city of flowers. In a month's time nobody will remember it, save for a few die-hard fans. Even radio stations will struggle to play it. Maybe.

Score: 5.5

(Giuliano Delli Paoli)

Irama – “Lentamente”

Irama returns to Sanremo with "Lentamente", a song co-written, among others, by the ever-present Blanco, as if to certify that this year nobody can do without him. The song is a compendium of the clichés that the singer from Carrara has turned into his trademark: heartache in heavy doses, wounded-wolf howls, and romantic dramas howled with the desperation of someone who's just discovered their phone battery is at 2%. The theme? A love slowly crumbling, just like the originality in his songs. Whiny verses, an abundance of past tenses, and an emotional crescendo he could belt out with the strength of his voice (assuming he still has one...) but this time the autotune turns him into a cyborg suffering for love. Is there anything positive in all this? No!

Score: 4

(Fabio Ferrara)

Joan Thiele – “Eco”

Plenty of people were probably wondering who Joan Thiele was, an outsider at this year's edition despite her recent David di Donatello win and her collaboration with Elodie. And just as many probably struggled to correctly pronounce her exotic-sounding surname. But in the end, even without taking home an official prize, she can be considered one of the true winners of the Festival. "Eco" has an enveloping groove, an incisive bassline, and an atmosphere that Joan glides through with feline elegance, moving confidently between sophistication and electric-guitar scratches. The song is a constant balancing act, between suspended moments and sudden openings that keep the attention high right up to the last second, and its trump card is a chorus that slowly worms its way in with every listen.

Score: 7

(Fabio Ferrara)

Corsi is the atypical minstrel who, even in a typical Conti-run Festival, would soar regardless. The song is thoroughly Corsi-esque and could have come off either of his last two albums, complete with the obligatory Mick Ronson-style guitar part - which is good news for the millions of Italians who, until last week, had no idea who Lucio Corsi even was or where he came from. There's a bit too much victimhood in the lyrics, which nonetheless go down well with plenty of people, especially in this age of cut-price confessionals. He brings along Topo Gigio on covers night to wink at the over-fifties crowd, and one can sort of understand why. "Volevo essere un duro" is certainly not his best song, radio-ready chorus aside, but it's potentially the hook he needs to show himself to the wider world and finally sail out to open water, after gathering up all the little seashells with his pals from the so-called indie circuit.

Score: 6

(Giuliano Delli Paoli)

Marcella Bella – "Pelle diamante"

Dear Marcella, I'm writing to you, just to take my mind off things a little. Because it's hard to judge you without thinking back to when you were queen among the queens of the Italian pop song. You return to that stage with a song that barely pulses, neither fish nor fowl, neither vintage nor young, and certainly not fit for a late-August barbecue. You're forgiven everything, and everyone loves you, when you thank that legend of a brother of yours, sitting in the front row at the Ariston applauding you. Even if his applause, like everyone else's, is just applause for past glory. The present is another story.

Score: 5.5

(Giuliano Delli Paoli)

Massimo Ranieri – "Tra le mani un cuore"

Ranieri's artistic abilities are beyond question: actor, TV host, a singer equally at home with pop music and with tradition, and, when called for, a fine dancer too - his range is genuinely impressive. Which is exactly why it's disappointing that every time he shows up at Sanremo, he does so with a variation on the same ballad. Not always necessarily about love ("Lettera di là dal mare", in 2022, tackled immigration), but always with that same slow, dramatic tone, weighed down by an orchestra that's more intrusive than ever. His musical career, more varied than people tend to think, proves he'd have plenty of other options to choose from: instead, in this context he seems to prefer the safe, familiar route, and that's a shame.

Score: 5

(Federico Romagnoli)

At one point Kekko put his own presence, and that of his mirror-image band Modà, at Sanremo up in the air. Unfortunately, he decided to show up after all. And to return to the Ariston with yet another over-the-top serenade to be belted out to the world, full of banal lines about looming divorces and karaoke-grade vocal outbursts. One would like to write something else, but there's really nothing more to say about a watered-down variation on Massimo Di Cataldo crying and screaming.

Score: 4

(Giuliano Delli Paoli)

Noemi is one of those artists who, a bit like Orietta Berti, is hard not to find likeable. She has a distinctive voice, a tone everyone can agree on, and a solid career, though one always balanced between success and missed opportunity. A Sanremo veteran with eight appearances under her belt, she's always stayed just popular enough to remain among the names that matter, without ever quite reaching that definitive breakthrough. So there was hope that the song written by Mahmood might finally give her a spark, a melody capable of surprising us and turning her career around. And yet, no: once again, the song is the same old Noemi song, and not even Mahmood can do anything about it. If we're being generous, perhaps it's one of the best things she's performed in recent years: destined to become a fixture in her live shows, but not to change her career.

Score: 6.5

(Fabio Ferrara)

Olly – "Balorda nostalgia"

One of the miracles Sanremo still manages to pull off today is turning an unknown like Olly into a mainstream star in the space of two appearances at the Ariston. This time he's here to win, with a ballad belted out heart on sleeve, which he performs with intensity, rawness, and a slight pronunciation quirk that only adds to his charisma. During the chorus, the veins in his neck bulge, his face turns purple, he's practically in tears and, by the end, gasping for air. Half melodrama, half stadium chant, like a rough-edged nephew of Vasco, still a bit too emotional. The lyrics are embarrassingly banal ("Ridere, piangere, fare l'amore/ E poi stare in silenzio per ore"), yet on that stage he's treated like our own Nick Cave. Always dressed like a bad boy. In the end, he really does win, and it's rather touching, because he doesn't seem prepared for it at all. More than the song, what wins is a young singer who congratulates runner-up Lucio Corsi and looks overwhelmed by a success he'd dreamed of but perhaps never quite believed possible himself. Ready and waiting for the emotional Instagram stories of his peers.

Score: 6

(Antonio Silvestri)

One of the artists who has genuinely grown since his first appearance at Sanremo, back in 2022. This time he's more in sync with the song he's singing, more polished at the mic, with a noticeable reduction in his pesky affected drawl and general insecurity. The song is fast, electronic and as rhythmically driven as almost any other in this edition, marked by various dips in intensity signaled by the recurring word "decrescendo" in the lyrics. By the third or fourth listen, it becomes hard to shake out of your head. Two elderly people even come on stage to dance, charming and poetic without tipping into pathos: within destruction there's also rebirth, just as growing old can also mean growing young again. So apparently certain themes can be tackled without having to explain to everyone what's morally right to do. He fades into the background on the cover of "La nuova stella di Broadway" with Michielin, perhaps a stretch too far for him at this point. On the Friday night he also shares the stage with Topo Gigio, and yet no one has ever seen the two of them together in the same room: so the doubt remains.

Score: 6.5

(Antonio Silvestri)

Rocco Hunt – "Mille vote ancora"

One could be uncharitable and say that the role of Geolier in this edition is played by Rocco Hunt. In truth, the comparison is a stretch, because the pop-rapper returns to the Ariston more mature but still in his own style, after the giddy highs of his summer hits with Ana Mena and something of a dip in listeners. He performs it well, intense without becoming mawkish, and throws in a small social message against violence, complete with a hand mimicking a gun. Using the same "sandwich" formula already seen above with Fedez, he covers Pino Daniele together with Clementino: the added verses are, predictably, forgettable, but they're clearly having a blast.

Score: 5.5

(Antonio Silvestri)

It didn't work last year, and the two-faced song idea doesn't work this year either: the electronic ballad doesn't speak the same language as the meme-pop chorus, which will nonetheless get chopped up for TikTok. The lyrics have nothing original about them, and she delivers them by switching between the styles you'd expect these days from a fashionable singer: a bit of rap, a bit of long held notes, a bit of buzzwords to help give the whole thing some character. There's even a moment pitched higher, with orchestral claps. All that was missing were the two unicorns. At least the look she brings to the stage gives her a certain edge image-wise: statuesque, she's at her best especially when dressed as Bulma. She's grown more confident night after night. When she covered Battisti, though, she overdid it a little, spoiling all the poetic delicacy of the original.

Score: 4.5

(Antonio Silvestri)

The youngest act in this edition of the Festival needed no fewer than six co-writers (besides herself) to put together a song with an obvious dance imprint, not particularly original. Sarah Toscano won the 2023 edition of "Amici" and arrives on the Ariston stage without too many expectations. Her goal is to gain experience and get herself known to a large audience. And maybe from there move on toward more challenging and interesting goals. She finishes in seventeenth place, not bad at all. Good prospects ahead.

Score: 5.5

(Claudio Lancia)

Shablo feat. Guè, Joshua & Tormento – "La mia parola"

Pablo Miguel Lombroni Capalbo, aka Shablo, is a DJ and producer who's been active for around twenty-five years, particularly in the rap world. Under his wing have passed Rkomi, Clementino, Guè, Salmo, Marracash, Fabri Fibra and many others. At the festival he shows up with a team of voices at his service: singer Joshua, rapper Tormento (formerly the voice of Sottotono) and the aforementioned Guè. The song would actually be a pleasant pop-soul number, at least until Guè comes in, showing off as always his refined poetic gifts: "Io le mando baci lei che per me è la più hot, mi dicevi taci, ora però sono il goat". No offense to Paolo Sorrentino, who calls him a good man and a breath of fresh air, but this only proves that being a great director doesn't necessarily make you a music critic. And when Tormento comes in later in the track, things get even worse.

Score: 5

(Federico Romagnoli)

Serena Brancale – "Anema e core"

Brancale, a multi-instrumentalist with a conservatory diploma in jazz singing, is certainly one of the most technically accomplished artists in this edition. Several live performances of hers are available on YouTube, showing a remarkable gift for improvisation and command of the styles she favors (R&B, but also jazz fusion applied to Italian pop, openly inspired by Pino Daniele, especially his early Eighties work). And yet, she wrote this song alongside four co-writers, three of whom keep turning up on other people's songs too, in a festival (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, in a national mainstream scene) increasingly gagged by the three major labels and in the hands of a handful of omnipresent writers, whose style tends to produce a constant sense of déjà vu. Brancale would have the potential to be a boundary-breaking artist in the mold of Teresa De Sio (granted, matching her career would be another matter entirely), yet to gain visibility she's reduced to singing a stand-in for "La cumbia della noia" by Angelina Mango, with a chorus just a shade more romantic.

Score: 5

(Federico Romagnoli)

The song is problematic, the theme is extremely delicate. Criticising it is a slippery slope: you risk coming across as heartless, a real bastard. The trouble is that there's only the theme, painful and sweet, of caring for an elderly, sick family member. Although it's not exactly demanding to sing, built as it is on a spoken-word delivery in the verses with a few sustained notes backed and underlined by the orchestra, he gets practically all of it wrong: he mumbles, stumbles, chokes up, can't quite pull it off. If the theme is painful and important, then the lyrics are an emotional cheat sheet, framing caregiving as a moral duty ("per restituirti tutto, tutto il bene che mi hai dato"; "ci sono abbracci che non devi sprecare") and leaving little to no room for nuance ("la fatica di doverlo accettare"). The rhetorical structure is laboured, with the anaphora of "ci sono" in the bridge and long lines dominating throughout. Even the imagery is borrowed from an anthology of the fairy-tale and the melancholic that spills over into the mawkish: the "bambina sopra un'altalena"; the "pagine di vita"; the "pezzi di memoria"; the closing "buonanotte". It's emotional blackmail more than a song, hiding behind a senile mother and using pain to move Italy to tears, naturally casting Cristicchi as the good son who accepts his burden, smiling like a singer-songwriter Christ. In the country with the second-highest average age in the world, the trick works beautifully. Heavily favoured by bookmakers halfway through the contest, it seemed destined to win Carlo Conti's restoration-era Sanremo, and yet it doesn't pull it off. Every now and then, then, things do go the right way. The cover of "La cura" simply restates the emotions of the competing song from a slightly different angle: redundant.

Score: 3

(Antonio Silvestri)

The Kolors – "Tu con chi fai l'amore"

Stash can play, can sing, and has no small amount of instrumental grounding behind him (his knowledge of genres like Italo disco is another matter, Radio Deejay docet). The point is that he keeps clinging to the tail end of (indeed) "Italodisco" as if there were no tomorrow. And that's what happens when real success arrives a bit late in the game. He uses a vintage mic that does its job, he puts in the effort, but in the end what's left? A new soup that's a bit funky, a bit disco, a bit of many things we didn't really feel the need for.

Score: 5.5

(Giuliano Delli Paoli)

Some caveats need to be made about Tony Effe, namely about his being an insignificant rapper and about a musical past that is, to put it mildly, obscene, which will in all likelihood keep surfacing even after Sanremo. So, trusting in everyone's general intelligence, let's say straight away that his "Damme 'na mano" is a song that has nothing to do with Dark Polo Gang and sweets of various kinds. It's in fact a track that pays homage to Califano in both music and words, and it has this Roman lad (not really) singing inside a trattoria, mumbling in fake-gangster tones and in dialect, without laying it on too thick — politely, even (!) — perhaps in front of the ghosts of Rome's greats, the likes of Lando Fiorini. Tony and the verb "to sing" in the same sentence are like oil and water, that goes without saying. But the surprise remains. As does the chorus, good for a quick hum right before going back to arguing about what to do with the guanciale on your plate. Which is unfortunately "a lot", given the generally poor showing.

Score: 6.5

(Giuliano Delli Paoli)

Willie Peyote – "Grazie ma no grazie"

The Turin rapper is the only one who didn't bring cut-price sentiment (with Rocco Hunt as the possible exception at most), in the most reactionary edition of the festival in years. The track is produced by Daniel Bestonzo and Stefano Genta, two keyboardists who have long been part of Peyote's backing band, and it fortunately stays clear of the meddling from the songwriters who are monopolising the festival — and it shows: the sound is completely disconnected from anything else in competition, moving between funk, pop and jazz fusion, complete with electric organ and a bassline that on its own is more lush than all the others in the competition put together (played by the excellent bassist Luca Romeo). The lyrics touch on some of the many ills of today's society, taking particular aim at the victim complex that far-right parties are effectively using to erode the democratic system ("E quanto va di moda il vittimismo di chi attacca ma dice che si difende, c'è chi dice non si può più dire niente poi invece parla sempre, almeno sii coerente, almeno per stavolta, che c'è chi ancora ti dà corda"). So far above everything else that it's almost embarrassing.

Score: 8

(Federico Romagnoli)

Here is the final ranking and the main awards handed out:

1. Olly – Balorda nostalgia
2.  Lucio Corsi – Volevo essere un duro
3.  Brunori Sas – L'albero delle noci
4.  Fedez – Battito
5. Simone Cristicchi – Quando sarai piccola
6. Giorgia – La cura per me
7. Achille Lauro – Incoscienti giovani
8. Francesco Gabbani – Viva la vita
9. Irama – Lentamente
10. Coma_Cose_Cuoricini
11. Bresh – La tana del granchio
12. Elodie – Dimenticarsi alle 7
13. Noemi – Se t'innamori muori
14. The Kolors – Tu con chi fai l'amore
15. Rocco Hunt – Mille vote ancora
16. Willie Peyote – Grazie ma no grazie
17. Sarah Toscano – Amarcord
18. Shablo – La mia parola
19. Rose Villain – Fuorilegge
20. Joan Thiele – Eco
21. Francesca Michielin – Fango in paradiso
22. Modà – Non ti dimentico
23. Massimo Ranieri – Tra le mani un cuore
24. Serena Brancale – Anema e core
25. Tony Effe – Damme 'na mano
26. Gaia – Chiamo io chiami tu
27. Clara – Febbre
28. Rkomi – Il ritmo delle cose
29. Marcella Bella – Pelle di diamante

The Mia Martini Critics' Award, given by the Roof press room, went to Lucio Corsi for "Volevo essere un duro".

The Sergio Bardotti Award for best lyrics was given to Brunori Sas for "L'albero delle noci".

Simone Cristicchi ("Quando sarai piccola") received the Giancarlo Bigazzi Award for best musical composition.

Simone Cristicchi also received the Critics' Award given by the Lucio Dalla press room.

Giorgia received the TIM Award ("La cura per me").

The young Settembre made his mark in the Nuove Proposte category with the song "Vertebre".

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google