
What we expect from Sanremo 2025
The first one after Amadeus
February 3rd, 2025
Sanremo is always Sanremo, repeating every year with enthusiasm or disillusionment, but in reality, it’s not quite like that. Before Amadeus’ reign as artistic and creative director (which lasted from 2020 to 2024), Sanremo was barely Sanremo. In fact, it was in one of its downward phases on the rollercoaster that is its history, which began on January 29, 1951, at the Casino in the Ligurian town. Considered boring, outdated, and in need of a revamp, the festival was stagnant. Claudio Baglioni and Carlo Conti had tried to make it appealing to young people, but they hadn’t quite succeeded. At least not like their colleague did. Now that Amadeus has not only left the festival but also left Rai, what will happen?
Carlo Conti's Old Sanremo
If we were to look at the previous festivals hosted by the presenter of Sanremo 2025—those of 2015, 2016, and 2017—what would we find? A lot of classic festival names, less known to the general public (Nina Zilli, Marco Masini, Gianluca Grignani, Irene Fornaciari), recurring artists (Bianca Atzei, Annalisa, Dear Jack, Lorenzo Fragola), but also the launch of names that would later dominate the charts and audiences, like Rocco Hunt and Francesco Gabbani, who triumphed in 2017. At a glance, however, the difference is striking. Sanremo was still a faint hope of a launch or relaunch for artists stuck in the middle of the ladder. No one would have expected that, within a few years, artists of the caliber of Marco Mengoni, Elisa, Giorgia, Alessandra Amoroso (to name just a few) would want to compete. Yet it happened, and it will happen again in 2025, in less than two weeks. So much has changed in so little time!
Claudio Baglioni's Sanremo
If we instead look at the two Sanremo editions hosted by Claudio Baglioni (2018 and 2019), we might notice a slight return to order and the history of Italian songwriting, a strict ban on singing covers in English, a more "classic" overall selection (especially in 2018), but also—let’s admit it, surprisingly—the victory of Mahmood with Soldi, which many believe ushered in a new era of modernity, not just at the Ariston but in Italian music in general.
Sanremo 2025: A Festival Trapped Between Two Opposing Forces
The seeds of innovation, therefore, already existed pre-2020. It was Amadeus who reaped the rewards, pushed the accelerator, and (re)established the festival as a cultural phenomenon, a talent discoverer and confirmer, a force that shapes and revitalizes careers as it hadn’t in decades. In between, there’s Carlo Conti, straddling the old and the new, but not without awareness. The awareness of being a transitional figure, of having to maintain attention while also throwing a line into the future. Perhaps the choice of Alessandro Cattelan as the co-host for the finale is precisely an attempt to do that. Because, let’s be clear, the change of guard at Rai is still far off, and something has to be done to pass the time. What we expect is precisely a generic mediocrity, one foot in two worlds, a bit forward and a bit backward. An attempt to please everyone, which, for this reason, already seems somewhat faded, somewhat strained. Trapped in a dilemma of its own making, under the pressure of having to balance two opposing demands: that of infinite growth, which isn’t possible, and that of preserving the prestige of an event that, despite everything, remains unique, representing the national-popular culture, a symbol—for better or worse—of what happens in Italy. The real question is: will social media users, those who joined recently and those who couldn’t stand pre-Amadeus Sanremo, stick around or abandon ship?