Sanremo 2024 is won by love, urban and artificial intelligence

Loredana Berté

Go to the Sanremo 2024 pre-listenings and the best song you hear is sung by a (I'm not a) 73-year-old lady who was already there at Sanremo 1986. Loredana Berté returns to the Ariston with a post-rock ride built on a riff reminiscent of the latest Smashing Pumpkins (!) and a refrain that is a bit of a variation on the theme of Dedicato: 'Io sono pazza di me di me/ E voglio gridarlo ancora/ non ho bisogno di chi mi perdona/ Io faccio da sola, da sola'. We are already crazy about her but we are left with a doubt: will the performance on stage be the same as the studio version?

BNKR44

BNKR44 come from Sanremo Giovani, they contain rock and roll performances, a few clever quotes ('Give me a bit of you, a Blur song, a club to rock in') and a few simplistic ones ('Put on another movie, a Queen song'). The best thing about their song is the title.

Alessandra Amoroso

The Amoroso aims to bring together young and old with a little help from Takagi and Ketra. A ballad with a refrain that takes up the concept of Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine: 'And even if I slowly fall down/ from a skyscraper/ during the flight/ floor after floor/ I repeat myself/ so far so good'. Not our cup of tea, but the reasoning must have been: 'Give the people what they want'.

Fred De Palma

Dancing tamarrata that seems to be generated by artificial intelligence: 'But you promise me that/ we'll be fine even in hell/ Heaven doesn't want us'. But will anyone have gone to ask hell what they think?

Fiorella Mannoia

Mannoia latinises about butterflies and freedom with a hermetic lyric about being a woman today: 'I am the witch at the top of the stake/ a butterfly that harnesses the gun/ a queen without a throne/ a crown of oranges and thorns'. You are political.

The Kolors

Seventies dancefloor exploiting the long wave of success of Italodisco. Stash puts in the airplay, Davide Petrella the Sanremo mood. 'A boy meets a girl'. The experiment can reach the podium area.

Emma

Music is alchemy. Emma, Davide Petrella, Paolo Antonacci and Julien Boverod get together to make contemporary pop, and out comes what could be a Pupo song: 'It's my fault/ If we're in the balance now/ But it's your fault/ Your eyes are killing me'. Apnoea, meanwhile, leaves us.

Santi Francesi

Winners of X Factor 2022 passed for Sanremo Giovani 2023, the Santi Francesi propose a pop with lyrics to be interpreted and antemic ambitions: 'You left me with love in my mouth/ without doing it on purpose'. De gustibus.

Rose Villain

Starts out as a sombre ballad, becomes a danceable catchphrase: "I still remember the sound click boom boom/ Feel my heart go so boom boom boom/ I run to you over my vroom vroom". As the poet would say: 'The boss's vroom has a hole in the tyre'.

Negramaro

First participation in the Big category at the Sanremo festival for Negramaro, who start all over again by betting on an epic Negramaro ballad: "And then it rains from that hole in your head/ yes, but it doesn't matter/ anyway you start again/ I don't even know where". Twenty years ago they would have won easily, twenty years later who knows.

Big Mama

Usual four-part bass drum and refrain full of generic gender claims: 'Look at me/ Now I am another/ Anger is not enough for you'. Exactly: the grade is 3.

Francesco Renga e Nek

A guitar-driven pop ballad about the inevitability of love, a feeling that, however you put it, our two big boys of the 90s just can't do without: 'I'm crazy about you and you don't know how I'd like to do without you'. In confidence: we too would have gladly done without it.

Ghali

Urban designed for Ghali's comeback in style. Lyrics full of great truths: 'The grass is green, greener/ The sky is blue, blue, blue'. The authors, in addition to Ghali, are Davide Petrella and Michelangelo, but we would have also seen Maccio Capatonda in a Father Maronno version.

Irama

Irama starts off shouting, almost as if he were a postmodern Adriano Pappalardo: 'Just a stupid song to get you back to me'. We sincerely wish him to reconcile with the recipient of the song. But possibly somewhere else.

Angelina Mango

Angelina Mango enlists Madame and Dardust to try and make her mark on this Sanremo. Her 'is the cumbia of boredom', you hear it once and remember it: programmed for the podium area.

Geolier

The concept is the same as Bob Dylan's Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I'll Go Mine), the developments quite different. The genre is urban, the language bold: 'Nuij simm ddoje stell ca stann precipitann'. More than Neapolitan, it is Neapolitan.

Maninni

Pop on the piano, ballad with a catchy refrain about the importance of being together: 'But hug me that's normal/ Holding you tight is spectacular'. A not too original performance.

La Sad

Foreword: at the 2023 pre-listenings we gave a 6- to Colapesce and Dimartino's Splash, yet it was the most beautiful song of that festival by a distance. We realised this on the second listen, because that was a song to metabolise. That is why we would like to listen a second and third time to Autodistruttivo by La Sad, who try to tell the mainstream audience the point of view of those who live on the margins by choice ("And I also vomit my soul to feel alive inside 'sto sto casino'") with the help of Riccardo Zanotti of the Pinguini Tattici Nucleari, one of the songwriters. Again, the song could grow.

Gazzelle

Ballad Brit with a few original metaphors ('We look like two pandas') and an easy-to-remember refrain: 'I'd like to look at the past with you/ against the wall with the projector'. That's all.

Annalisa

Honestly, we haven't heard such a clever dance pop song at Sanremo for a while: 'Sinceramente quando quando quando piango'. It will work, you can bet on it, but again we are smelling artificial intelligence.

Alfa

The verse sounds like an Oasis cover, just a little more free-range than the reference model. Dear Alpha, we couldn't have said it better: go!

Il Volo

For the tenors of Volo, their return to the Ariston was a modest one. You can accept the Eighties ballad structure with the trademark set vocals that crop up here and there, but how can you name a song Capolavoro? In the Po Valley they would say: 'Vula bass'.

Dargen D’Amico

Among the very few songs in this edition that want to say something more than the usual I love you: 'The high wave is coming/ Let's stand still and not talk and not jump'. Let's hope it comes to the Riviera for real.

Il Tre

Usual catchy tune with some urban suggestions: 'We are as fragile as snow, as two cracks'. Fragile a bit like this song.

Mr. Rain

Chef Mr Rain cooks up the house speciality: the pop song that all the kids will love, a bit like chicken cutlet breast with fries: 'You and I stop the world when we are together/ even if it lasts a second like comets'. Already if they could farm the glycemic index we would be content.

Ricchi e Poveri

In Amadeus's Sanremo there is never a shortage of retro cringe: after the various Rita Pavone, Orietta Berti and Iva Zanicchi, this time it is expressed by Ricchi e Poveri who produce what should be contemporary pop: 'Even the most beautiful rose becomes withered/ Va bene ti aspetto ma non tutta la vita'. Inexcusable.