In these weeks between the selection season and Eurovision itself, in Basel, artists and delegations are touring Europe through pre-parties and other occasions to showcase their entries, trying to get closer to victory. But what is the road to Eurovision victory? The London Eurovision Party is now behind us, and the next steps are the first rehearsals. As we wait for these, we at ESCXTRA look back at the last eight winners of the contest, and at their own road to victory. This week, we skip 2020, which had no winner, and continue with the 2021 champions: Måneskin, from Italy, and their song “Zitti e buoni”!
Genesis of a song: Moonlight in Rome
Genesis of a band
In november 2015, two roman teenagers, Victoria da Angelis and Damiano David (who had collaborated on projects before), set out to create a band. Victoria found two additional members to join them : her schoolmate Thomas Raggi, a guitarist, and Ethan Torchio, a drummer (which she found after posting on Facebook that she needed one for her new band). Victoria was a bassist, and Damiano a singer.
Based in the Monteverde neighbourhood of the Italian capital, they first performed in the streets of Rome, especially on via del Corso, the long street connecting Piazza del Popolo and the Victor-Emmanuel II monument.
We performed in via del Corso in Rome: with the petty cash we received we made our first single. We made some money with these live performances, we were going strong: 50 to 100 euros for an hour. Then there was the tourist or the cheikh who left 20 euros out of sympathy. We were on the small public square of the Santi Ambrogio e Carlo church, next to the break dance group, competing with street artists for the location.
Victoria DA aNGELIS ABOUT THE BEGINNINGS OF mÅNESKIN, to Il Messagiero
At the time, they had no band name. They had to find one in order to compete in the 2016 “Pulse – High School Band Contest”. Unsure about how to proceed, they asked Victoria to say some “cool words” in Danish (her mother tongue), and Måneskin (moon shine, or moonlight) was one of them.
After this, they managed to perform in a meeting for independent artists and labels, and later on to audition to the 2017 edition of X-Factor in Italy. Performing one of their original song, “Chosen”, they managed to earn a spot in Manuel Agnelli’s team, who was in charge of bands in this edition (with each judge in charge of a specific demographic group: Fedez, for example, was the coach for the men aged under 25).
They reached the final of the show, and ended up as the season’s runner-ups, bookending their journey with another performance of “Chosen”. Their most famous performance in the show, however, was their cover of “Beggin”, which they performed in the second live show (out of seven weekly shows, after the auditions and bootcamp).
After the show, their career took off: appearances on TV shows, in festivals, and a sold-out European tour. That tour was for promoting their first album — Il ballo della vita, with singles such as “Torna a casa” and “Moriró da re”, as well as some songs in English — which was released just in time for the launch of the 2018 X-Factor season.
Being young, and very much a rock-band, they were not the obvious candidates for a Sanremo line-up. And it did take them some years to get there. But they had a song ready for it. Sort of.
“Zitti e buoni”, from ballad to rock banger
“Zitti e buoni” was first composed some five years before Sanremo 2021, and was, at first, a very slow ballad. In their creative process, the band usually rearranged, rewrote or mashed some of their songs, especially unreleased ones. This was what eventually happened to “Zitti e buoni”.
The slow ballad, written by teenagers, turned into a much heavier rock song rearranged by young adults with years of experience behind them. But even in its definitive version, the lyrics remained the same (or were only slightly changed), and still told the story of young people.
“Zitti e buoni” literally means “quiet and good”, in plural. But these words are better understood in the context of the pre-chorus (and of the whole song), from which they are extracted :
| Italian lyrics | English lyrics |
| E buonasera signore e signori Fuori gli attori Vi conviene toccarvi i coglioni Vi conviene stare zitti e buoni Qui la gente è strana tipo spacciatori | And goodnight, ladies and gentlemen Bring out the actors You’d better touch wood* You’d better stay quiet and behave Here the people are weird, like drug dealers |
*“toccarsi i coglioni“ literally means “touching one’s balls” but it is an idiom better translated as “touching wood”, an expression used to preventively avoid jinxing yourself with bad luck.
These lyrics, sometimes a bit crude, were for the younger generations, and aimed at the older ones who refused to understand their struggles. The song is, to all intent and purposes, a cry for freedom and escape in a suffocating situation. “Too many nights I’ve spent locked outside“, sings Damiano right after the last line of the table above. “They talk, unfortunately people talk, they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Bring me where I can stay afloat, ’cause here I can’t breathe!“, he shouts in the bridge. And the chorus sings it all: “I am out of my mind, but different from them / You, girl, are out of your mind, but different from them / We are out of our minds, but different from them“.
It could be seen as the rummaging of teenagers (with the coarse language and the whole “They can’t understand me” and “I’m different” vibe), and the band did admit that listening to it again, it felt “old”, relatively, because they were young when they first wrote it. But transformed into a rock anthem, it felt much more like their 2021 self.
This transformation occured in the middle of 2020. And once they had the final product, Måneskin wanted to showcase it on a big stage. The next step was Sanremo.
Earning the ticket: Revolution in Sanremo
The 70+1 Festival and the question of the audience
In 2020, for the first time in history, the Eurovision Song Contest was cancelled. This was due to the Covid-19 pandemic, whick brought most of the world into lockdown for several months over the spring of 2020. Italy was among the most gravely hit countries, and one of the first to enter lockdown, in early March. In these dark times, “Fai Rumore”, the winner of Sanremo 2020, had become an anthem, sung by Italians at their windows, who found echoes in Diodato’s lyrics : “Make noise, yes, ’cause I don’t know if I can bear it, this unnatural silence between me and you”.
As the restrictions of the first lockdowns eased, and with a much brighter summer coming ahead, the questions of 2021 could be asked. RAI was among the first to react, confirming very early that the 71st Sanremo Festival would be held in 2021, with dates confirmed in July 2020. The Mayor of Sanremo, Albert Biancheri, had already hinted at the possibility of holding it later than its usual February spot: and indeed, the dates were set for March.
Amadeus was once again chosen as the artistic director and host of the festival. And in September, he made his message clear: Sanremo 2021 would need to have an audience, and to be as normal as possible.
The 2021 Festival, what for me is 70 + 1, must be the first post Coronavirus festival, that of rebirth: it must be the festival of normality after the pandemic.
Amadeus, about the preparations for Sanremo 2021, in September 2020
[…]An empty Ariston, or with a distant audience, with the members of the orchestra being two meters apart from each other, is unthinkable. So, if we were to understand that it still cannot be done without masks, the only solution would be to cancel.
A few weeks later, RAI confirmed its Eurovision participation, and said that the winner of the festival would, as usual, get the right of first refusal to go to the contest — famously invoked by Olly this year.
With autumn and winter came other Covid restrictions, but things were going ahead with Sanremo: 24 artists from the “Campioni” category were revealed a few days ahead of Christmas. But the question of the audience was still looming: if no audience could be there, would the Festival still go ahead ? Commercials partners and sponsors were in favour, and considered that the absence of a public of a few hundred priviledged individuals would not change the nature of the festival as a TV event. Amadeus, on the other hand, was still insisting on the importance of a live audience, and was ready to postpone the festival to 2022, effectively cancelling it. His statements came in late January, a few days after RAI had definitively confirmed the 2021 dates…
In the end, Amadeus had to change his mind. Italian law did not consider the Festival to be a “TV event” (which could have some public during recordings), and with rising Covid cases in the winter, it was confirmed in early February that the shows would go ahead without a public, and with no side events, on the planned dates of March 2 to March 6.
Måneskin, rocking it at the Festival
The show went ahead almost as planned. The 2021 edition started with two nights, each introducing half of the artists, with the third night as “Cover night” (only allowing Italian songs that year), and the fourth and fifth both showcasing all of the entries.
Måneskin performed in the first night, and were in eigth position in the running order. With a strict embargo on Sanremo songs, this was the first time “Zitti e Buoni” was heard by the general public, in an orchestrated version.
Wearing black clothes, and performing in the middle of a red and black stage, they performed one of the best versions of the song. The addition of violins, especially in the second chorus and the bridge, echoeing the guitar and bass and complimenting them, and the simple presence of live instruments, gave the song a true Sanremo facture, while remaining a Måneskin rock song.
The first voters, however, were not particularly appreciative. In the two first nights, a demoscopic jury of 500 people was the only source of votes, and ranked “Zitti e Buoni” in 7th position in the night, which turned into the 15th position out of 26 after the second night. The favourites of this representative sample of the Italian population were Ermal Meta, Annalisa, and Irama (who saw several members of his staff tested positive to Covid, and who almost had to withdraw, until Amadeus intervened and got to an agreement to let Irama use his rehearsal footage instead).
Måneskin’s odds brightened (and shortened) in the next two nights, having finished 6th during the Cover night (voted by the orchestra) and 2nd in the fourth night, in which only the press jury was voting. The Saturday show was the first time the actual TV public could vote, with this televote counting for 25% of the total, and joining the three other votes (jury, orchestra, and demoscopic). With the release of all the songs earlier in the week, “Zitti e buoni” had found its fans, and the public put Måneskin in second place, pushing it to the overall runner-up position in the first round of the night.
The top 3 went to the superfinal, Måneskin being joined by Ermal Meta (Eurovision 2018), and the duo of Francesca Michielin (Eurovision 2016) and Fedez (who had been a judge during Måneskin’s X-Factor adventure). This time, the votes were split 33/33/34 : a third for the press jury, a third for the demoscopic jury, and a slightly bigger third for the televote.
Both juries were split almost equally : Ermal Meta and Måneskin both earned 35% of the press points (with Francesca & Fedez getting 30%), while the demoscopic jury gave 33% to all three entries (with Ermal Meta at 34%). This meant that, in practice, the public would decide everything. Earlier on the same night, their favourites had been Francesca Michielin and Fedez. But in the superfinal, 54% of the votes came to Måneskin, bringing them the Sanremo trophy.
This was an incredible feat for a rock song, and for such young artists. Ernesto Assante summarized the idea very well in La Repubblica, talking about the winning song and some of the other entries:
The sound of a new generation, which marked a very strong break with the past, which occupied the scene, the charts, the streaming platforms, out of the big industry, out of the ways of official communication, growing in new media, underground, signaling a profound distance from previous generations. The Festival brought them to everyone’s attention, it turned the light on a generation in motion, which is changing the rules of the game, at a time when Italy needs new energy, new hopes and, let us admit it, new songs.
Ernesto Assante in La Reppublica, “With Måneskin (and others), revolution has won in Sanremo 2021”
Måneskin was quick to accept the offer to go to Eurovision. A few days later, they released a new version of the song for the contest, slightly shorter and with a “cleaner” language. And so, they were set for Rotterdam. But Eurovision was facing similar issues in terms of audience and Covid restrictions…
This article continues on the next page.
