Seven songs seemingly impress on first Festival di Sanremo night

The marathon of all marathons has started. Five days of the Italian Festival di Sanremo. Twenty acts took to the stage tonight to introduce themselves and their songs to the Italian audience. They’re all still in competition!

People’s jury

The Italian voting is made up of three parts. Part of it is the televoting, another is the jury. The final part is a people’s jury, with three hundred Italians to represent the Italian people.

At the end of the night, the people’s jury votes were sort of revealed. We heard in which category the songs fell: Blue, yellow or red. Logically, the blue zone was the best possible option. Yellow was described as purgatory and red meant trouble. Here’s how the acts were classified:

Blue zone:

• Noemi – Non Smettere Mai Di Cercarmi
• Ermal Meta & Fabrizio Moro – Non Mi Avete Fatto Niente
• Annalisa – Il Mondo Prima Di Te
• Max Gazzè – La Leggenda di Cristalda e Pizzomunno
• Nina Zilli – Senza Appartenere
• Ron – Almeno Pensami
• Lo Stato Sociale – Una Vita in Vacanza

Yellow zone:

• Luca Barbarossa – Passame Er Sale
• Elio e le Storie Tese – Arrivedorci
• Giovanni Caccamo – Eterno
• Mario Biondi – Rivederti
• The Kolors – Frida (Mai, mai, mai)
• Ornella Vanoni & Bungaro ft. Pacifico – Imparare Ad Amarsi

Red zone:

• Red Canzian – Ognuno Ha Il Suo Racconto
• Decibel – Lettera dal Duca
• Diodato & Roy Paci – Adesso
• Enzo Avitabile & Peppe Servillo – Il Coraggio Di Ogni Giorno
• Roby Facchinetti & Riccardo Fogli – Il Segreto Del Tempo
• Le Vibrazioni – Così Sbagliato
• Renzo Rubino – Custodire

Four more nights

Claudio Baglioni has taken over from Carlo Conti as creative director of the show. He also hosts it. This year, together with Pierfrancesco Favino and Michelle Huntziker. They welcomed multiple guests tonight, including Gianni Morandi. Tomorrow, acts like Il Volo and Sting will attend.

In the remaining four nights, all twenty acts will remain in competition. Tomorrow, half of the acts will perform their entry once more. The same goes for Thursday. On both nights, the youth competition, Giovani, will also be taking place.

On Friday, we’ll see duets between the competing acts and famous other Italian acts. During that night, we’ll see the likes of Michele Bravi and Giusy Ferreri back on stage.

The final will then take place on Saturday. All twenty acts will compete, but only one can win Festival di Sanremo 2018. That winner will then be asked to fly the Italian flag at the Eurovision Song Contest 2018 in Lisbon.

Variety galore

If you’re looking for variety, Sanremo is your thing. There’s the common Italian ballad you’ll see more than once, but just tonight, we’ve seen a group performing in Hindi costumes and a cameo performance of British 83 year old dancer Paddy Jones, who rose to fame on Britain’s Got Talent.

And let’s not forget: Sanremo covers it all. Tonight, we saw youngsters taking to the stage in the Campioni category for the first time ever, but at the same time, Ornella Vanoni, now 83 years of age, also took part.

Early favourites in the competition seem to be Fabrizio Moro and Ermal Meta, but we can’t be sure. After all, we’ve only seen an indication of the people’s jury. We can, however, use the YouTube views. Their song has gone down well with the viewers there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0NF8BZlH4I