Sstories like a movie, drugs, dissing, heartbreaking love and high quotes (Klein blue). These are the times of the songs competing in Sanremo 2025. Then Naples, the Latin world and some photocopy pieces. No war and heavy social issues, as he said (and said during the pre-listening sessions) Carlo Conti. In short, micro worlds instead of wide-ranging panoramas. No rock, then, just pop, rap (mixed with pop), urban and a few pinches of soul. In short, it’s a truce in Sanremo too. It is difficult to identify a winner out of 30 songs (which could have reached 36: 6 – again Conti – deserved to enter the competition). There are great things among songwriters, Brunori Sas and Cristicchi, while the rest of the selection is quite average and homogeneous, especially in the rap and trapper area, Dove, however, surprises My word Of Shablo feat Guè, Joshua and Tormento (a real blast of rhythm and rhymes).
Sanremo 2025: preview report cards of the 30 competing songs
Francesco Gabbani Long live life. Rating: 5
Pop and melody with a large orchestra. Hymn to help, to support oneself, with emphasis on fragility (“paralysis”, “anesthesia”: obviously in a figurative sense). The message is positive but, for him who won with Westerners’ Karma right with Conti, also very anonymous.
Phrase: Long live life as it is/ Long live life this life that.
Clara Fever. Rating: 5
Dance basses with żum żum rhythm changes and lyrical openings. It works without completely breaking the dancefloor. Sophisticated quote: “Klein blue”: who knows who will recognize it at first listen.
Phrase: Alone on a terrace/Everyone does bling bling, I don’t even like myself.
Willie Peyote Thanks but no thanks. Rating: 6
Attack on conventions and on what is appropriate to do or should be done. A broad look at social media tics and poses. This is right, that is right; yes to victimhood, no to supporting everyone with my taxes. Successful, but in the background.
Sentence: And you tried more times than Jalisse.
Naomi If you fall in love you die. Rating: 6/7
Classic Noemi that rises salt with potential for vein stripping. The development is that of a love story and the risk that everything will wither. Piano, anger and reflection; a result that convinces without truly annihilating.
Phrases: Because it’s impossible to forget those nights/With a smile and bags under your eyes.
Naomi. (Nicolò Parsenziani)
Lucio Corsi I wanted to be tough. Rating: 7
A very valuable study on the soul that has the flow of a comic strip, of an innocent merry-go-round on the world. With the wonder for simple things, with the mother who makes recommendations and the sunflowers that warn of dangers. It is melancholic, also due to the downward ending of the text: “I am none other than Lucio”.
Phrase: I wanted to be tough/But I’m nobody
Rkomi The rhythm of things. Rating: 6+
Urban reconnaissance on a carpet of bass. Good hold, circular and quite hypnotic. It has strength, but not enough to remain like the photograph it would like to be a warning about.
Phrase: It’s a modern decrescendo/It’s a slow-burning hell
The Kolors You who you make love with. Rating: 6
Word games and dance frenzy. One of the hit groups pushes on a base like many others a juicy refrain introduced by an effective pre bridge: minimum-mikonos. Seas of outstretched arms and dancefloors full of families, including grandmothers, are expected.
Phrase: I like you a little/You’re waiting for me in Mykonos
Rocco Hunt A thousand votes again. Rating: 7
Neapolitan mixed with Italian. And the result is very good, with a rap and pop that mixes Vesuvius and the dance floors of every place. It’s hard to resist the refrain about «A thousand votes again/and laugh/and chat». Heartening
Phrase: Campà accusations are tough/It was better at our house.
Rose Villain Outlaw. Rating: 6
Last year’s streaming queen repeats herself. The style, the dance screeches, the sudden changes of pace. And those vocalist openings immediately followed by excited rapping. The text is a world in which pop quotation, nostalgia and commiseration reign. A fairly predictable one-off, but still fun. The false ending is to be applauded with her at the concert.
Phrase: I laugh at our adverse fate/I listen to At least you in the universe.
Brunori Sas The walnut tree. Rating: 7 and a half
Very nice. The love story is well supported by images of time and space, and then opens up to a delightful and moving refrain between desire and awareness. A diary page set to music. Will the Sanremo audience understand it?
Quote: I grew up in a cruel land where snow mixes with honey.
Brunori Sas. (Press Office)
Serena Brancale Anema and Core. Rating: 5
Everyone on the track, rhythm and carpe diem. The dream is that of a journey of you and me, star of a story Coastal and convertible. Rituals and clichés are all there. Tourist
Phrase: Tonight we will be two stars of Italian-American cinema.
Irama Slowly. Rating: 6++
Piano and voice that soars (his, which not everyone likes). Filippo Maria Fanti knows how to make ballads and when you listen to him there is something magical, even if in the long run the fire seems to get thinner.
Phrase: You were cruel cruel cruel/Cold as snow snow snow.
Marcella Bella Diamond skin. Rating: 5
Marcella between strobes while portraying herself as an icon, she and the women, with all the necessary self-justifications and self-certifications. The thrill, however, is more than feline and very cringe. You can’t say he didn’t try. What is certain is that – as predicted – it will be the sculpture of Sanremo 2025, even more so if the look is designed accordingly.
Phrase: Bitch, perhaps, but surprising
Achille Lauro Unconscious young people. Rating: 7 and a half
Pop by trade. But the teen dream is pleasant, and with epic highlights (the – sudden – use of a New York rooftop sax). It is Achilles in a state of purity. Known, known, pleasantly painful and regretful.
Phrase: I’ll call you from an Autogrill/In a hundred years or so.
Elodie Forgetting at seven. Rating: 6/7
Ballad disguised as a dance piece. In fact, a vague feeling of nostalgic elsewhere hovers over the whole song, immediately brought down by the moderate straight bass drum. Finished, it seems like a dream, just in time to realize how that “Forget at 7” repeated in the refrain (7 in the morning, by the way) is absolutely fly-killing.
Phrase: But what a strange effect it has to swallow the truth.
Tony Effe Give me your hand. Rating: 6
Tangone with a very flattering tribute to Rome “don’t be stupid tonight”, Califano, sanpietrini. On gypsy shades. For the series play neutral and at home. A flattering Effe imprisoned in a network of love, between pain and requests for peace, and where she leads him (which will perhaps raise some eyebrows).
Phrase: You are not sincere/You are dangerous.
Massimo Ranieri A heart in his hands. Rating: 7 and a half
Written by Tiziano Ferro and Nek, among others. And you can feel it. Crystalline music and linearity of thought, with a progressive sense of drama and the end. It flies on violins and a well-crafted melodrama dimension.
Phrase: And I will save your heart at the bottom of the sea/life has broken it and it continues to love.
Sarah Toscano Amarcord. Rating: 5/6
It won’t revolutionize dance, but it has some good things. Even if it is difficult to extract it from the generalized dance carpet that unites too many songs of this Sanremo 2025. Exhausting.
Phrase: The evening laughs but it sounds romantic/it seems like the darkest area of an amusement park.
Fedez Beat yourself. Rating: 6
Half dissing to Chiara (Ferragni) and half medical prescription, half touch song and half seduction from too many traumas. A diary of a year of life, not a life like many others, let’s say. Call it pharmacological pop rap.
Phrase: Fluoexetine, little saliva/When I find myself talking about you.
Georgie The cure for me. Rating: 6 and a half
Blanco is among the authors. And Giorgia’s classic Sanremo song breaks down while remaining faithful to her vocal power. But it doesn’t die, giving up a catchy and convincing core is elusive (which for many may not be a demerit at all, on the contrary).
Phrase: The closer you get, the further I move away.
Olly Stupid nostalgia. Rating: 5/6
Generic pop of soul and anger, between the domestic and the urban. Maybe it won’t be, maybe it’s already over, but I love you. The title of the song is silly and the rendition is silly.
Sentence: I turn on the TV just to keep myself company.
Coma_Cose Little hearts. Rating: 7/8
This Cuoricini is a real hit (which throws the mind at the indestructible ease of Cicadas by Heather Parisi and even the Qua Qua Dance by Romina Power). Extremely sticky and unstoppable back disc. He will struggle to win, but the ranking is assured for a year.
Phrase: A sofa and two cell phones is the tomb of love/even the doctor told us so.
Coem_Cose. (Silvia Violante)
Simone Cristicchi When you’re little. Rating: 7 and a half
Valuable songwriting centered on the figure of a mother, played small in the sense of small, weak, fragile. The reading seems to be the only possible one, that is, that of an irreparable dementia. Heartbreaking.
Quote: There are things you can’t erase/There are hugs you shouldn’t waste.
Emis Killa Demons. Rating: 5
Zoom zoom on an urban story of heartbreak and the end of the world. Here too, widespread use of medical prescriptions, Fentanyl; and then of red carpets and Molotov cocktails. Cursing and decadence. And few things that remain.
Phrase: Under a rain of Molotov cocktails/I already know it will end like this.
Joan Thiele Echo. Rating: 7 and a half
“Bang bang woo,” Joan recites at one point. But the onomatopoeia should not be misleading with those of other colleagues. The piece is definitely very good, the first in these 30 to sound new and surprising, agile and cryptic in weaving a love relationship. In the soul structure you hear a lot of Amy Winehouse, but they are details.
Phrase: But if you’re there I have more courage.
Fashion I don’t forget you. Rating: 5
Excited screaming pop rock that flows into a wall of sound. As only they, alas, know how to do, and repeat.
Phrase: It’s difficult to accept it but we are no longer the same.
Joan Thiele. (Press office)
Gaia I’ll call, you’ll call. Rating: 6-
A little Batida de Coco, a little acid ballad. By the book, with every gimmick and pop quote that is the most correct and effective, every box flagged. He wins on length, taking by exhaustion.
Phrase: Good thing he doesn’t take the iPhone into the high waves of Rio.
Francesca Michielin Mud in paradise. Rating: 6+
Very long chapter explanation of daily life that speeds up and slows down, and speeds up. Basically the paraphrase of Noemi’s piece, with good things lost in a sea of minutiae. When you reach the end it feels like you’ve woken up from a podcast.
Phrase: The ceiling is no longer there / Who knows who you will have a child with.
Shablo feat. Gué, Joshua and Tormento My word. Rating: 7/8
The urban team of this Sanremo 2025, a new yes-can-give-more quartet, mixes soul and pop in a piece that is an irresistible play on words and sound. Where pm10 rhymes with blues and gin. Very effective even in brevity.
Phrase: I will burn until the end closed between concrete and smog.
Bresh The Crab’s Den. Rating: 5/6
Full pop for the rapper from Lavagna. With much already heard in bridge. But it is certain that for some it will be a masterpiece. If nothing else, the demystification of oneself for someone who perhaps no longer wants it comes directly.
Quote: My room is not a metropolis/What a nightmare it is to wait in a studio apartment
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