ITALY

The Italian entry was selected and confirmed on February 11th during the annual Sanremo Music Festival, hosted by Carlo Conti and Maria De Filippi.. Before the final there was a week full of qualification, wild card and second chance rounds before the final of 16 was finalised. During the final, the winner was chosen via a combination of a demographic jury (30%) expert jury (30%) and televoting (40%). As with the last couple of years, the overall winner of the festival is given first refusal as it whether they want to represent the country at Eurovision. During the press conference, it was confirmed that the winner would go to Kyiv. The winning act was Francesco Gabbani singing "Occidentali's Karma"(Westerner’s Karma)          

The setup of the song is very simple although the presentation was ever so slightly different throughout the week. Francesco starts on stage alone (although of course at Sanremo there is a conductor, a full orchestra and numbers of backing singers either side of him) about half way through he is joined on stage by a dancer, who is disguised as a gorilla and by the end of the song they are interacting and dancing together. Behind them there is a very colourful backdrop which mirrors the story of the song, including henna patterns, yoga positions and the evolution of man from apes.

The song starts off very quietly, when suing live he sang the first part a cappella but am unsure if this will be replicated at Eurovision) His voice and personality is very engaging. The song is very cleverly written as there are lots of words you can pick out that mean something to an English speaker e.g nirvana, singing in the rain, Buddha, web and of course karma. The tempo and rhythm of the song is very repetitive and the chorus is such a joy. The point where the audience and orchestra should ‘ah-yeah’ is just spinetingling. I can almost see the whole audience during ESC joining in at that point as well as joining in the new dance craze sweeping the continent as we speak. I would say that my only reservation would be the very abrupt ending although in some ways it ties up the loose ends between the singer and his new primate pal.

This is an incredibly instant song. If you don’t remember Francesco, you will remember the gorilla. If you cannot remember the song you will remember the dad dancing routine. In some ways, this is a hark back to the low-key gimmicks of the 70s and 80s Eurovision with the sub-English lyrics, dance routines and costumes. There have been questions raised about the subject of the song and whether it is artistically sensitive or verges on showing cultural appropriation. The song is about other (mostly Eastern) cultures and philosphies but more about the people who pick and choose things from these different cultures or see themselves as experts or 'gurus' because they've googled it. I think it is more a social look at shifts in society rather than pointing at the cultures themselves.
 As it stands’ the song is around 30 seconds too long. The song could be sped up a little and possibly the very short instrumental taken out but apart from that I am struggling to see where they can take away time without stunting the song’s flow. My main guess might be that they reduce one, or both, of the choruses by a few lines.

This is such a happy, carefree and beautiful song and nothing would make me happier than seeing this rocket up the leader board in May. But there are 2 questions that needs answering

1 – who IS behind that gorilla mask…. and 2 – do Italy REALLY want to win…?

ARTIST - Francesco Gabbani

SONG - Occidentali's Karma (Westerner’s Karma)

MUSIC - Francesco Gabbani, Filippo Gabbani, Fabio Ilacqua, Luca Chiaravalli

LYRICS - Francesco Gabbani, Filippo Gabbani, Fabio Ilacqua, Luca Chiaravalli

                             (This video was from one of his performances during the week - not the final)