Oh, Italy. You really are a country that keeps on giving:
Of course. When thinking of Italy, obvious treasures like pizza, burrata and anything made with nebbiolo grapes springs to mind. There’s a lot to be grateful to Italy for, really, and don’t even get us started on their art history or film and tv productions.
Also, there are men and there is music, usually in a most exquisite combination. We are highly impressed by and quite thankful for the number of great male artists this country produces, and people like Niccolò Fabi, Samuele Bersani and, of course, his royal highness Marco Mengoni all seem to have emerged from the second best music festival in the world. Luckily, some of them also win SanRemo and are sent to Eurovision for us to love them unconditionally and throw them around our hotlist.
Being half Italian, at least in our hearts, we believe Italy will win every year, of course. The problem is, so do Italy. And them being as passionate as only Italians can be, they overload their artists with all the crazy stage props they can find, all the lightning equipment available north of Lampedusa and such high expectations you have got to be David made of marble not to have a nervous breakdown just in time for the jury final. So they crash and burn every year. Or do not win, at least. Even though they usually have the best song and artists by far.
This year, Italy doesn’t only send one, but two wonderboys to Lisbon. Ermal Meta and Fabrizio Moro are both highly skilled artists with long careers to talk about in their YouTube interviews, and they probably won more gold records, awards and girl hearts than all the other competitors combined. They both sing like Enrico Caruso is looking over their shoulders and they seem so professional they might leave last year’s Portuguese know-it-all speechless. We also find it quite amusing that one of the few European countries who still hasn’t banned discrimination based on sexual orientation, choose to show up with two men singing a duet. How very sweet indeed.
The song is stellar, of course. Both the video and the lyrics are about all the conflicts and pointless wars in the world today and how many people are injured by it. Even the English translation sounds like a poem, with lines such as “But against all the terror that hinders the path / The world gets back up / With the smile of a child” and “I know that everything won’t come back / Happiness flew / It floated away, like a bubble”. Not a message to jump up and down to in Euro Club, maybe. But certainly one we all need to hear and it doesn’t feel cheap or bland, And despair not if you do not understand Italian. We hear rumours Jon Ola Sand is financing Italian classes for all fans this year. But just in case that doesn’t go through, Ermal and Fabrizio at least have a line in every language known to man in their video.
Anyway. What more is there to say? We love Italy. We worship Italy. We want to take Italy home and make love to it all over the kitchen counter. And one day we’ll ask Italy to marry us and make lots of nice little babies. We also think Italy might have an actual shot at winning the rest of Europe’s hearts this year. Just don’t tell the Italians before it’s over, will you?
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