It was of course necessary to address the angry subject. But Damiano David was not offended. The Måneskin singer even seemed to be waiting for the question. The one posed to him, alas, by all the French journalists he met these days during the promotional marathon in Paris.
On May 23, he had barely won the Eurovision Song Contest with his group when the controversy ignited the Internet. The handsome Italian ducked his head suspiciously: wouldn’t he have snorted a prohibited substance? The controversy swelled, so much so that he offered to undergo a drug test upon his return to Rome to prove that there was nothing wrong with him. In the meantime, the tricolor bad faith has worked at full speed. Barbara Pravi having finished second, some cockerels began to imagine a transalpine disqualification which would give a French victory on the green carpet. The singer of here and the delegation had the elegance of not going to play in this barnyard. Nevertheless, the episode woke up the Franco-Italian war that was believed to be reserved for the football stands.
Damiano David assures him that he has no resentment towards France – of which he also studied the language, younger, by studying for two months near Antibes. “Of course the people who accused me will never be my best friends, but I don’t think about it anymore. With time, all this becomes anecdotal ”, answers the singer that 20 minutes met Thursday evening. He does have other things to think about.
“The dream is what happens to us now”
Drummer Ethan Torchio, bassist Victoria de Angelis and guitarist Thomas Raggi, the other members of the group, sit beside him on the long dark sofa. In their white and black outfits with stylish seventies glamor, they let nothing show of their fatigue, they who, for more than a week, have been crisscrossing Europe. Before Paris, they stopped in Denmark, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and, this Friday, Poland is on their roadmap.
“Even more than winning Eurovision, the dream is what happens to us now,” says Victoria. “We didn’t expect the victory to have such a resonance,” continues Damiano. We thought that winning would attract some attention to us in a few countries, but we never imagined doing interviews and televisions all over the place. »This Thursday, it is in the premises of Daily that we found them: they recorded the program of which they are the guests which will be broadcast this Friday evening on TMC.
Crowds of fans
From the middle of the afternoon, in front of the studios, about fifty fans, overwhelmingly young women, hoped to see them appear in the street, watching for the slightest opening of the door. Everywhere in their path, the same scenes are reproduced: hordes of admirers, cries and effusions. “We are blown away by all the love that is given to us. We did not expect all that, ”slips Victoria. The Måneskins are receiving floods of social media messages. “A lot of people tell us they are related to us, thank us. We are happy if we help people to accept themselves or to go through difficult moments in their life by giving them strength, ”continues the bassist.
Zitti e Buoni, their victorious song of Eurovision, whose title can be translated as “Shut up and stay wise”, transmits a message of self-assertion in spite of the external judgments which speaks particularly to the youth. The androgynous aesthetic, sexy and thwarting heteronormous codes adds to the aura of the group. The Måneskins have just been on the cover of the special edition Pride of the Vanity Fair Italian. But they don’t stop at imagery. While Italy is shaken by heated debates about a bill against homophobia and transphobia, the group fully supports the text. “It would be a big step forward for our company,” says Damiano David at 20 minutes. To say that this would limit free speech is bullshit, because it only limits racist, homophobic, transphobic expressions that shouldn’t exist. “
Success in the UK is “an important recognition”
Back to music. In France, the Italian group is above all highly regarded on streaming platforms, but in other areas, its impact is phenomenal. Zitti e Buoni is already one of the international cartoons of the year. The song was number 1 in Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Lithuania, number 2 in Switzerland, number 9 in Germany… How to explain such a plebiscite? Rock energy? Words calling for disregarding the judgment of others? The Italian language ? “A mixture of all that”, responds the quartet in heart. “There is no magic formula, but this type of music, even if it has always existed, was perhaps lacking on a mainstream level”, specifies Thomas.
Zitti e Buoni served as a locomotive for I Wanna Be Your Slave, appearing on the album Teatro d’Ira: vol. I released in the spring. The song records around 700,000 weekly streams in France and has made it to the Top 10 of a dozen countries. Including an excellent seventh place in the UK. ” That’s crazy ! rejoices Damiano. The English market is difficult to approach, it produces a lot of music, especially rock. So, for us who rock, it’s an important recognition, it means that we do it well. “
Carried by this beautiful dynamic, the Italians intend to beat the iron as long as it is hot. The Måneskins have already started work on their new album, announced for the end of the year.