For the first time since 2016, Italy is sending a solo woman to Eurovision!*
After 25 or so hours of Sanremo (I don’t know how many hours it was since I entered a sleep-deprived delirium at times during the week), Angelina Mango was crowned the winner out of thirty largely worthy entrants at Sanremo** with the song La Noia, which translates to Boredom.
A song called Boredom? Is this the second coming of Ace Wilder?
Well, no. Instead of the bratty ennui conveyed by Wilder, Mango brings a Latin-tinged pop song about her tendency to get bored, seek new experiences, and – most of all – dance. La Noia was written by Mango along with rapper Madame and Italian hitmaker Dardust. It’s easy to see why it’s connected with Sanremo fans, watching Mango insouciantly navigate the stairs of the stage while tossing off lines like ‘the cumbia of boredom.’
And yet, La Noia’s air of playfulness and fun masks a deeper meaning. It can be read as a song about deflection. Mango sings:
While La Noia doesn’t go into her traumas, her story is well known to the Italian public – her father, the famous singer Mango, died of a heart attack during a 2014 concert, when Angelina was still young.
But the way she deals with this is by staying constantly on the move in a whirlwind of activity – going from city to city, from party to party, so that she always has something going on. The moment that she begins to feel bored, she starts dancing. All of this frenetic activity – the focus on living without suffering and seeking the laughter – is a way to stop getting bored, yes, but also to stop the feelings that may come with the stillness and a chance to actually stop dealing with the immediate things in front of you.
So if Italy is a) sending a woman with b) a dance banger about c) a topic that is close to her heart and from her personal experience, why am I not more excited about this song?
Maybe it’s because the song is as frenetic as the emotions it’s trying to represent. Once Mango starts singing, the song never lets up long enough to let us process it – and as soon as we have a section that changes the tempo, it’s straight back into la cumbia della noia. It’s great for a summer beach party, but just seems like the rhythm is slightly off for a three-minute Eurovision song. Which makes sense, because the song wasn’t written for Eurovision – it was an Italian pop song that happened to win Sanremo and thus had first right of refusal for Eurovision.
Or maybe it’s just because Sanremo was an embarassment of riches this year, and there were so many other songs that I loved more than La Noia, and I haven’t quite gotten over the fact that one of these is not going. For example, the lush and maximalist pop stylings of Sinceramente would likely have delighted the same crowds that went wild for Monika Liu and the disco-tinged Sentimentai:
And despite all of the pre-Sanremo chatter about Mahmood fatigue, the man knows how to deliver a hit. By the end of the week, all of us were in love with Tuta Gold and its infectious chorus about five gold cell phones.
Of course, my favorites from Sanremo, who had no chance at all in qualifying, would have been an absolutely charming addition to this year’s Eurovision contest. Ricchi E Poveri won Sanremo and went to Eurovision way back in 1978 with the song Questo Amore. This time, two members down from their heyday, and well into their seventies, they entered a high-energy Italodisco song about how their lives were not over yet, and performed it with more verve than many of the contestants that were a quarter of their age.
*Please correct people when they say it’s the first time since 2016 Italy is sending a woman to Eurovision, because Victoria De Angelis does not rock as hard as she does for you to ignore her like that.
**If you’re a male singer whose name rhymes with “The Drama” please just stay home next year, okay?
dudepoints.fun 