Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

Giacomo who? I hear you ask. Watch closely Valentina Monetta on stage in Baku and also in Copenhagen and there he is providing backing vocals. Among his other musical productions this versatile singer has had time to record and release his own Italian song book of the songs he thinks are some of the jewels of the last 40 years of Italian music.  At first glance it seems to be like any other including the usual classics from Lucio Dalla's Caruso to Gino Paoli's Il cielo in una stanza, Battisti's E penso a te and Gianni Morandi's Canzoni stonate , but then, there are some pleasant surprises like Banane e lampone by Dalla/Morandi and E non finisce mica il cielo by Mia Martini. But there's even more. Cu ti lu rissi and Lugano addio are two songs less familiar to this blogger but they are great and fit his voice perfectly. On the track list one song sticks out like Lordi in the Eurovision history: Mamma Maria , a classic 1980's Italopop by Ricchi e Pov...

Here we go. As soon as the song titles and artists were confirmed for Sanremo 2012 problems were here. The song by Chiara Civelli, Al posto del mondo , was already presented for the newcomers selection two years ago sung by Daniele Magro . His manager prompted to put the song online now so Chiara's song is no longer a new one. And risks disqualification. But more attention is paid to the one Respirare by Gigi D'Alessio and Loredana Bertè. They both had a snippet of 30 seconds of the song online in their respective Facebook earlier this month for a moment before they were informed that actually they were accepted to Sanremo. So, in theory this is to be disqualified as well. This follows La Berté's previous Sanremo affair four years ago when she was disqualified with her Musica e parole as it was discovered during the festival the music of the song had already been released in 1988 with different lyrics. There's also a precedent for these 30 second snippets affairs. In ...