Europe has gone crazy for Francesco Gabbani since his victory in Sanremo on Saturday night! Francesco immediately accepted RAI’s offer of representing Italy at the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest. Since his victory, Occidentali’s Karma has become popular all over Europe both on social media and in music charts. Most notably, Francesco has topped the Italian iTunes and Spotify charts. In addition, he has entered highly in the iTunes charts of Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
English lyrics will be added for Eurovision
Nevertheless, there is an issue. Occidentali’s Karma is 3 minutes, 37 seconds in length. Therefore, a special version of the song will have to be produced for use at Eurovision. In an interview with soundsblog.it, one of the songwriters, Luca Chiaravalli, has revealed one big piece of news:
“We will make changes for the Eurovision version and we will put parts in English because, otherwise, the Eurovision viewers might not fully understand the meaning of the lyrics. Using the ape might seem like a stupid decision otherwise. The purpose is for those who do not know our language to understand the meaning of the song.”
Not a first for Italy
This seemingly confirms that the Eurovision version of the Italian entry will include English lyrics. This isn’t necessarily a surprise. Since Italy’s return to the contest, three of the country’s entries have been entirely in Italian. On the other hand, the other three entries have been bilingual. Raphael Gualazzi, Nina Zilli and Francesca Michielin all chose to use English lyrics for their Eurovision entries.
For the time being, you can watch Francesco’s performance from the final night of Sanremo below!
What do you think of the decision to add English lyrics to Occidentali’s Karma? In this situation, do you agree that it is important for the whole of Europe to understand the message of the song? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below and via our social media pages @escXtra!
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