ITALY 2024

  

Five days, thirty artists, over twenty hours of television, and one John Travolta later, the Sanremo Music Festival produced a winner at 3 AM Italian time on Saturday night. The first woman to win the festival in a decade: Angelina Mango, singing "La noia" [The boredom]:

About the Artist

Angelina Mango (her real name!) is 22 years old and hails from Maratea ("the Pearl of the Tyrrhenian") in the province of Potenza in southern Italy. Her father Giuseppe Mango was an Italian pop legend who performed at Sanremo a few times, as has her mother Laura Valente. This is Angelina's first Sanremo attempt.

Best Things We Lost Along the Way

One of the best Sanremos in years - they've really done a great job with musical diversity recently. Some of my favorites this week:

• Annalisa Scarrone, "Sinceramente", 3rd: The pre-contest favorite in Italy. She’s a Sanremo regular and hopefully she’ll get a shot at Eurovision soon—this would’ve been good enough for top ten in Malmö, honestly. Quando, quando, quando, quando, quando, quando.
• Santi Francesi, "L'amore in bocca", 18th: Entered from the Sanremo newcomers’ section and performed admirably in the big show. It’s not a style we see much of from Italy.
• Clara, "Diamante grezzi", 24th: The winner of the newcomers’ section—an honor previously given to such people as Laura Pausini and Andrea Bocelli. Honestly good enough to win the whole Sanremo festival, not sure why this was 24th.

Song Analysis

First off, this is another great example of the great variety of music at Sanremo this year. The cumbia influence is clear and even referenced directly in the chorus. Angelina's a very charismatic performer, and the live version is just so good. 

Italy's History

Since their return in 2011, Italy have been one of ESC's most dominant countries. They're riding a run of 6 straight top-6 finishes, and they've consistently received top scores from both juries and televoters. That's with a wide variety of music, too - it's not just man ballads anymore. 

Italy does slightly worse in my own rankings, but that's still 8th of 48 countries. They're typically in my top ten, and it's rare (2022) to see one that I truly don't like.

1 Måneskin — “Zitti e buoni”

2 Mahmood — “Soldi”

3 Nina Zilli — “L'amore è femmina”

4 Marco Mengoni — “Due vite”

5 Raphael Gualazzi — “Madness of Love”

Prognosis

It's Italy, this is top ten at worst. I can see the voters really falling in love with Angelina and putting this very high indeed, though probably not winning?

Current Rankings