Last nights highly enjoyable night with generally pretty good covers, some great moments (Angelina Mango, Mahmood, Alfa. Mr.Rain, Ricchi e Poveri etc) ended with audience in Teatro Ariston booing and whistling in disapprove when Geolier was revealed as the winner of the evening. A common Eurovision fan watching might wonder why and what happened?
He's Napolitan and the music industry in Naples is its own empire, not mixing that much with the general Italian music scene. They have their own musical heritage, language even. They have superstars who aren't big outside Naples and its region. Geolier is a bit of a cross over artist like Gigi D'Alessio and late Pino Daniele. Then again, Napolitans tend to vote - or so it is accused - a Napoletan artist no matter what. A bit like in the 1980's/90's in Finland gypsies voted gypsy artists to victory in several singing competitions. Sometimes with merit, sometimes not. The same is happening now in Sanremo it seems. Televote is what it is.
And mind you, I don't have it Geolier, I have it with the system. He commented:
“It was really bad, I prepared a lot, I did everything to bring these three monsters,
then winning and going on stage with people booing, leaving,
it was the worst performance of my life"
And here we come to the point I have been against since this crazy thing was added: Why on earth the covers night ranking and voting is part of the competition itself? Why isn't it just a night of entertainment and competition apart? If it is a part of competition like now there should be better guidelines or themes for song or you end up like RengaNek covering themselves with their own hits. I mean... wtf?! Same goes of Loredana Bertè. Then we have artists like Mahmood who brings something totally different, with an idea and very special guest act to top it all. That's how it should be. And the voting in this case should be by professionals to value originality, effort and courage, not the one who manages to collect most televotes by bringing other artists like Geolier with said Gigi D'Alessio (who belted out about five words in the end), Guè and Luchè, all with strong fan base.
Angelina Mango gave a fantastic tribute to her late father that had sense and had a meaning, with a song he wrote for her when she was just a kid. There was a long standing ovation and many teary eyes in the public but she hold it together. I don't know what happened backstage but if she was pouring her eyes out I wouldn't be surprised. Also Alfa with Roberto Vecchioni did a great job. Luckily these two were awarded in the end. Annalisa did vocally good performance, nothing spectacular but a good effort. Ghali really went all out singing first in Arabic and ending it all with Toto Cutugno's L'Italiano. A real Italian indeed. I guess certain politicians were outraged. I'm so happy it was voted to the Top-5.
Fiorella Mannoia and Francesco Gabbani was another highlight of the evening with a little bit comedy added to them belting out their respective Top-2 entries from 2017. You can do your own songs if you have a reason and twist for it. They did. And it seemed they had the time of their lives on stage.
For tonight's final it looks good for Geolier, Angelina Mango and Annalisa, the rest maybe out of chances to win. Or are they? We don't know the differences between them. Tonight there's first 100% televote, after Amadeus has revealed the ranking from 1-30. People may go for tactical voting against Geolier, or then now. After that the Top-5 of all previous votings together will be announced, all votes zeroed and a new 34/33/33% voting will take place with televote/media/radio. Then tactical voting will have another chance.... We'll see, sometime early Sunday morning.
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