In Italy we have a problem with music festivals. Not only because the few who exist – and who resist – are increasingly in difficulty, given an economy of the live that prefers events in the stadiums, the absence of institutional protections and an audience who loves to suggest with the coachella, the Sziget of Budapest and the Spring Sound of Barcelona, ​​only to disinterest the epigones we have. But also because it is the very concept of festival that is blended: they are often sold as such reviews of concerts that last, perhaps, a month, and every evening they have a different name on the bill, which often has to do with others; Nothing bad, but a real festival, at least for how it is understood abroad, is another thing, it is an experience first of all, in which music acts as a connector, lasts a weekend and in those days, also thanks to the use of more stages simultaneously, calls several artists, all in some way connected to each other. And from us, all this, is a rarity.

A real festival

A good exception, in this sense, is the Mi Ami, which takes place in Milan every spring – this was the 19th edition, from 22 to 24 May, will talk about it for 2026 – and collects the best of Italian music in circulation, with small episodes of international guests. This time it was discussed for the issue linked to Morgan, the truth is that it is an excellence in our country and, in any case, an experience to be made, at hand more than other foreign events, valid even if you are not great connoisseurs or music enthusiasts.

The Rockit music site and the Better Days agency have always organized it, it was the incubator of the Indie and It-Pop scene-Calcutta and Thegiornalisti, but also Bruori Sas and Lucio Corsi-and for some years he has been seeing it with new variables. In a nutshell, given the great popular of Italian music in Italian and Sanremo, it has become all mainstream: what was at the beginning was an alternative scene pulled down many of its borders and the public expanded and mixed, so that I love me, which has adapted, there are names of the underground such as others from Sanremo, songwriters and stars of the Urban. It is played on several levels. Among the many – more than eighty artists scattered in three days of live – have marked Diodato and Joan Thiele, a refined songwriting therefore, but also stars of the indie that was, and still in vogue, like Giorgio then and Fast Animals Slow Kids. And then the now historicized rap of a Noyz Narcos or the urban of the future of Sayf, the BNKR44 and the psychologists, the supporting columns of the alternative such as the offlaga disco pax and the theater of the horrors, talents to keep an eye on in sight Sanremo as Emma Nolde or finally the return live, albeit very short, of Sangiovanni.

Why go to me loves me

The feeling – also in the perspective of next year – is that the Mi loves has definitively made a step forward and that it can become, while taking into account all the diversity of the case, the Italian reference festival at national level. The new location have to do with Milan, which for 2025 has guaranteed beautiful landscapes at sunset, four stages all wide and in general a livability that, for appointments so, between files and more, is fundamental. Of course, for those who are a frequent visitor to the first hour they will certainly have made strange to note the expansion to genres-also here, never like this year, and it is a clue for the future-which at the identity level have little to do with the indie that was, so much so that in some moments it was struggled to find a meeting point between the various artists in line-up. In the same way, not all performances, as it happens everywhere, have been up to par, but there is such an abundance of music and selection as to make the review representative. In short, you love me, you go to hear who was in Sanremo in February, who will go there next year and even those who, in the end, never went there, or will never go there. We go – and it is really worth it – to spend an evening between four stages, building a listening path, taking advantage of the concentration of artists to recover those that, perhaps, cannot be seen during the year. And above all we go to feel part of a community. As in the great European festivals. Only this is around the corner.