Sanremo Song Festival Review

If you just can’t get enough of the Sanremo Song Festival (like me!), here’s a great review from a guy called Joe Grima in Malta who watched the whole thing this year – and is very glad he did:

This has been the San Remo of the highest standards of music composition and lyrics. This San Remo has brought together the best batch of professionals in all fields and they have left in their wake the most impressive festival of song that I have ever seen.

As the husband and I noted when we translated both the overall festival winner “Ti Regalerò Una Rosa” and the winner of the young songwriter’s category “Pensa”, social problems were prominent in this year’s Sanremo Song Festival lyrics. Grima says that although “Pensa” seems like an anti-Mafia song, it’s much more than that:

It is a hymn to those whose courage remains a shining light in a world of darkness – those who gave their lives in order to see this corrupt world changing. It is an invitation to the weak within society to find the strength and bring about change. Think before you pull the trigger, think before you judge people, think before you utter words that hurt and that destroy, think before you give the order. Think before you act because justice is not an illusion. The spirit of the message is encapsulated in those few words.

I’ve had “Pensa” stuck in my head for days now, and can’t wait to get my hands on the compilation CD when it comes out. Grima says that both Fabrizio Moro (who wrote “Pensa”) and Simone Cristicchi (who wrote “Ti Regalerò Una Rosa”) “are destined to become mega personalities in the music world and in their personal lives as well as for having had the guts to speak about taboos.”

Moro and Cristicchi both have very interesting backgrounds, which Grima talks about in his review – really, it’s well worth a read. He also touches on the history of mental hospitals in Italy (the subject of Cristicchi’s song), which is good for some context.