Sanremo Giovani: And another thing...

The best thing about a long holiday (US) weekend when you have no holiday plans is that you get these extra days to just let your brain reset and detach from the world without actively disassociating. Five stars. Highly recommended. (Full disclosure, I checked my work email Friday. Yes, the office is closed. Yes, everyone should know that, but I'm living that meme where I'm accidentally important at work and it's ruined my life. Save me?)

Heat three of Sanremo Giovani was this past week, and we got to hear from Alex Wyse, Nicol, Bosnia, Cosmonauti Borghesi, Giin, and Arianna Rozzo. Most of my top songs are found in Heats 3 and 4, so I was expecting heartbreak, but in my opinion we came away with the best possible results from that bundle of songs, with Wyse, Bosnia and Rozzo moving through to the semi-finals.

Here's the thing: Alex Wyse has been a specter haunting me in this competition up 'til now. He's a former Amici grad who's built a respectable following (read: rabid fanbase) over the past three years, with 3 gold records and 78k monthly listeners on Spotify. (Quick glance: he's currently got 175k monthly listeners on Spotify. Put a pin in that for later.) I don't think his song "Rockstar" is a standout track next to the other songs in the competition ("Gocce di Limone" would have him near the top of my list though!), but from the start I've been assured (by many of the 35 other English-speaking viewers discussing Sanremo Giovani on the Internet) that due to his popularity and name recognition he was a lock to get through (along with Mew, Tancredi (2 platinum records), and Settembre), so I held my breath hoping that none of my favorites went head-to-head with each of them. (I'm going to start watching Amici, if I can find it subtitled in English. Tell me what season to start with.)

I do love Nicol's voice (61k monthly Spotify listeners), and personally prefer "Come mare" to "Rockstar," but I did breath a sigh of relief when the match-up was announced. If anything, this might have been the most "match-y" battle so far, from the emotive singing down to their matching silhouettes with each having short dark hair and wearing pleated chinos and black crew necks. For me, Nicol sang better on the night (what a gorgeous voice!), while Alex also sings well and has a more confident/commanding stage presence. I can understand why vocals alone weren't enough to propel her into the semi-final round. It does seem like she was tasked with the impossible.

So, I read All Music Italia because I'm like this 24/7/365 (I'm just usually quieter about it), and this article has been sticking in my crawl. They discuss Carlo Conti's remarks about using a seeding system to guide the Sanremo Giovani match-ups, based on the contestants scores from the audition rounds. The article gripes that sports seeds are known to the audience based on performance, while the producers aren't sharing the seeding with the audience and they don't trust that the seeding is real when the most well known artists have all made it through. However, they immediately toss in some lazy predictions before Heat 3 for the rest of the prelims which also partially map to some fan predictions which turned out correct about the first two Heats and were generating a lot of conversation at that time. The reason their "predictions" created a record scratch in my head was that they weren't bold enough to predict all three winners for Heat 4. They laid out Conti's statements about merit-based seeding, expressed skepticism, and then made the same predictions I'd seen elsewhere, but shared nothing to support those choices. And it didn't make a lot of sense to me. There aren't any bad songs in the competition, but here were two different sources confidently predicting the same songs to carry forward and in my opinion, agreeing upon the three weaker songs in the round. It made me wonder why. What were they looking at that I couldn't see?

I'm not saying that they just used those fan predictions for their article. I am saying since the predictions and AMI were in agreement, and only got one right during Heat 3, I found it interesting to try and figure out what they were basing their choices on. Looking back, after digging around, the predictions are lowkey obvious and reinforce AMI's stance that the producers are organizing battles in order to reward existing popularity rather than the merits of the individual tunes.

Behold! I have visual aids.

However, Heat 3, the first week after those fan predictions were getting traction due to their accuracy, was also the first week where the three most popular artists weren't automatically paired up against the three least popular artists. (And the first week where the gap between 3 and 4 in artist popularity was so slim.) Now, I'm not saying the producers changed the order based on the clear pattern of the previous weeks' results. If anything, I think this shows that the seeding was in place all along, because otherwise you never would have paired Nicol off with Alex, when the two who did go through have about a tenth of her listeners. However, it makes sense to me that they would have been seeded higher than Nicol or Giin, because Bosnia and Arianna Rozzo have some of the best songs in the competition. Seriously, if you're reading this and you haven't listened to "Vengo dal sud" or "J'adore" yet, first of all, I don't know how you found this, but welcome, and nextly you should click on some links and give those songs a listen.

"Vengo dal sud" was a huge revelation for me. It's sonically addictive, utilizing disparate techniques and genres to tell the story. Bosnia both raps and sings over a persistent propulsive rhythm and electronica elements that keep the song turning in unexpected directions. You have to listen multiple times just to wrap your head around what you just heard, and then you have to listen again because it's so damn good. Arianna also sings and raps in her song. There's something silky and playful and delightful about her song, and her beautiful voice wraps around you like a warm velvet blanket even when she's singing that she doesn't give a fuck. J'adore her.

Heat 4 comes up this week, and overall, the artists don't have as many listeners as those in the other groupings. Currently, Angelica Bove and Vale Lp e Lil Jolie are the acts predicted to sail through. I doubt we'll see another head-to-head battle between the two most popular acts in the group, but mostly because these really should be 2 of the 3 highest seeded songs this week. Angelica's song is a fun synthy bop that's reaching out to the Annalisa audience (me! I'm talking about meeee!) with its bright music and darker lyrics, while Vale Lp e Lil Jolie bring a bratty (complimentary), playful bop of a song co-penned by Madame to the battle.

When I said the fan predictions were lowkey obvious, it's because the only one that didn't map to popularity (as measured in monthly Spotify listeners) is Sea John in Heat 4. His back catalogue is on Spotify (one EP and a couple loose songs), but it is not available outside of Italy, unlike the other artists. (His music is available to international audiences on YouTube though.) His Sanremo Giovani song, "Se fossi felice," is not on streaming yet, as of 12/1/2024. (I hope it's available by Tuesday's show, so he can make the most of this opportunity, and also because I need to add it to playlists instead of refreshing Raiplay every 3 minutes.) All of these things impact that reach. The casual Sanremo Giovani enjoyer is reaching for the playlist and not manually adding the artists who don't appear on it.

However, he does have the best song/vocals in the competition, vacillating between a delicate whisper and a growling roar. Gorgeous range, the sort that is especially memorable and impactful live. He plays three distinct characters in his video, which also leads me to expect he can bring that charisma and emotion to the live show. If the fix isn't actually in for the three most popular artists in the competition, having seen the level of live performances that have gone through already, I can't help but believe he could be the dark horse who makes it to the Ariston.

Also, remember, if I was organizing this production to make sure the twelve best songs went to the semi-final, all six of the Heat 4 songs would be going through, so I mean no shade to the other artists, and I really can't wait to get live versions of all of these songs.

Sanremo artists reveal is almost upon us. I'm writing about that for the other site, but I'll either cross-post or get personal with it over here.