Eddie Brock in Sanremo: “Big or not big, but what do we care”
He takes it lightly, with a mixture of self-deprecation and gratitude. Even compared to those who consider him not big enough for the Ariston stage – something that regularly happens every year with someone. In his case there is a fresh story, the success born on social media with “Non è mica te”. Eddie Brock, born Edoardo Iaschi, born in Rome in 1997, makes his debut among the big names at the Sanremo Festival with “Avvoltoi”; on March 6th he will publish the deluxe version of “Loving yourself is the revolution”.
“I honestly didn’t imagine it, I only dreamed about it,” he tells Rockol when talking about arriving in Sanremo. “I found out on November 30th, I didn’t really know. I had a small inkling that it could happen, but I didn’t hope too much because it had always been a dream.” When the news came, he says, “it was an emotion I had never felt before.” The idea of presenting a song for the Festival, he says, matured while “Non è mica te” was growing more and more and the phenomenon was moving from social media to streaming: “I thought it was a good time to try, also talking to the people who work with me. But when you try, in order not to be disappointed, you always remain a little detached. Because you say: ‘Damn, if they don’t take me and I believed in it so much, maybe I’ll be very disappointed’. I didn’t feel like it.”
“What if I’m not big enough? It could be”
Every year, in Sanremo, the discussion reopens about who is or isn’t “big” enough. “They might even be right, it depends on how they interpret it,” he replies. “I’ll take this opportunity and this honor. If people think that I’m not too big to be in Sanremo, maybe they’re right from their point of view. I go there and demonstrate what I have to prove, trying to be myself and make people emotional. But if they’re big or not big, what do we care,” he says with a laugh.
“Avvoltoi”, he specifies, was written after “Non è mica te”, but it wasn’t born with the Festival in mind: “I did it at the end of July, August. I wanted to come out with a new single that represented my journey, Sanremo wasn’t in the plans. I had no idea that it could end there. It’s really a part of me, an extension of my journey”.
The “It’s Not You” case: “I didn’t understand the mechanism”
“It’s not you” has become a case since its circulation on social media but, he explains, it hasn’t changed his way of writing: “I didn’t understand the mechanism of what happened… I wrote a song like I always write them, because I wanted to tell a story. There wasn’t a mechanism. If you go and look, it doesn’t even have a classic structure: there’s the verse, then the chorus, then a double chorus, there’s no real special. It’s a stream of consciousness: you I quote James Joyce because I have to pretend to know something… But in reality I liked telling that story and I told it. If I start building the songs too rigidly, with the walls of the structure, I shut down.”
The song has also become the soundtrack of football “edits”, of videos in particular linked to Roma. “It’s a wonderful thing,” he says. “Songs have a thousand lives. Maybe they put it under a video about Stepinski from Verona: you would say ‘but who is Stepinski?’. But it works. People interpret in their own way an idea that wasn’t even that. Think of how many stories the same story can have.”
The Roman school and the duet with Fabrizio Moro
Eddie Brock is compared to the Roman school of songwriting, the classic one and the one that comes from indie. “I definitely recognize myself in it. If you approach me to that house there, I am the most honored person in the world. If I can represent my city even in a small part, I am very happy.”
On the covers evening he will duet with Fabrizio Moro on the notes of “Portami via”, a song with which his colleague competed in 2017. “As soon as they called me, I said: the first dream is to go to Sanremo, the second is to sing with Fabrizio. I called him, hoping for the best, because he didn’t have to come with me. He was polite, kind, helpful. We chose this song because I started watching the Festival more assiduously just when he won”.
Di Moro also feels the path is close: “When I was 24 I already felt old enough to do this job. I listened to Moro and thought: then I too can do it. And in the end I was right.”
“Loving each other is the revolution (Deluxe)” and the tour
“Loving yourself is the revolution (Deluxe)” will be released on March 6th. In addition to “Avvoltoi”, it will contain the duet with Moro (recorded in the studio) and a new song, “Your universe”. “It’s a song that I care a lot about and that I wanted to put in. I hope that other songs that may not have been listened to as much as they deserved will also be rediscovered.”
Then the tour will start on March 26th in Milan (Santeria Toscana), and then continue on March 29th in Rome (Largo Venue), on April 3rd in Naples (Duel Club) and on April 4th in Catania (ECS Dogana), to continue in the summer.
