Until a year ago, in the face of some just good results on streaming, Olly was almost unknown. Federico Olivieri – this is his real name, born in 2001 from Genoa – came from rap, had tried without finding the square in hip hop, had passed for Sanremo Giovani and looked like a talented artist, of course, but looking for an author . Twelve months later, on the eve of this festival, he was instead among the favorites to victory, thanks to a change of style with individual pop-rock such as Devastating And For two like us (with Angelina Mango), with whom she found a personality and breach in the tastes of the Zeta generation, which has become attached by rewarding it on televoting with 31%. Far, yes, from the Bulgarian percentages of Geolier of 2024, but it is still a treasure not to be denigrated, because such faithful fans are not obvious. Then you know how it is, the Ariston is the conclave, you enter cardinals and you go out of the Papi, so in the coming months the challenge will be to overcome the generational block and reach everyone. As they say: “In Italian homes”. Or at least on their smartphones.

The secret of Balorda nostalgia

A little bit what happened last year to Angelina Mango, with whom Olly shares the manager, Marta Donà, at the fourth Sanremo won in the last five (only exceptions Chills by Mahmood and Blanco): beyond the usual dietrologies, the artists go to the end, the physical performance and the focus of Olly has paid and, to trace causes and consequences he also hurried to the reasons opposed to Mango, where where She had been rewarded by the press room, while with the new voting system the response of journalists was “popped up” and the bulk of “power” returned to televoting. But also the song started from different foundations, which is why a parallel between Balorda nostalgia And Boredom It makes no sense: if the second destroyed the classical Sanremese idea, this plays a championship in itself, it is a pop-rock ballad that is a guarantee, only to find out that behind its simplicity there is a touch reserved for a few elected. And Olly is evidently among those.

There has been talk of “New Vasco Rossi”, a cumbersome label and attractive-cattiverias from which he himself has free himself, as it is clear that the reference remains the rocker of Zocca, both in an ancient version and in the modern one (who Others “but how do I say it?” From Okay, that’s okay to As in fairy tales. It also seems misleading me that of “voice of its generation”, because this music is not the daughter of its time and has no hooks with the topicality – and we mean, especially in the first case it is a merit. More songwriter than many peers who presented themselves with plastic or soul pieces this year, he came out with a pop-rock ballad of love and nostalgia that travels for absolute (the life that ends because a love ends because ) and collects the long tradition of those to be singing “of belly”, even this easier to say than to do. The generational question, if anything, concerns the public: the kind of reference, like that of the album All life Which contains it, it is an evergreen that had not yet found a “emissary” just for today’s boys, so here we are. A passage of witness.

Olly’s future

Those who shout at the return of the barbarians, at the time when Marco Carta and Valerio Scanu triumphed with the televoting, does not capture the potential of Balorda nostalgia And Olly’s path itself, more songwriting than you pretend not to see (trivially, is not written by the usual authors). Of course, Brunori Sas and Lucio Corsi remain another thing also and above all for a vision of music – and therefore of life – different and lateral, but it is not an absurd to put them all under the same roof and to recognize, in their success, a signal of life by the general public, albeit divided into different age groups and depth.

It is likely that at the Eurovision Song Contest it will be played a lot on the performance and that we will start back in the grids, but there is no shouting to the lost occasion: the beautiful story of the Måneskin, the most “foreign” of the Italian groups, has accustomed us too well, the truth is that we have not baled even with pieces with international vocation like BoredomErgo makes no sense to win a goal in itself almost unreachable. Maybe courses would have had some more arrows, of course – remaining on the podium – not Bruori sas or Cristicchi (do you imagine the audience that even understands the texts?). Beyond how it will go, Balorda nostalgia risks being Lost in Translation Because the daughter of a music that we only understand us Italians, always. And this, it is clear, is its strength, which in the coming months could push Olly at the top.