Olly as Vasco: in the sign of the “triangle” with his fingers

In recent years it has often been said that Olly has changed his skin. Not only in the writing, which is more choral, more designed to be sung together with the public, as he himself said, but also in the way of being on stage. An evolution that also passes through the declared influence of Vasco Rossi, one of his points of reference. It’s not just a question of sound, then. It’s posture, it’s gesture, it’s attitude. Vasco has always played with irreverence, with double meanings, with a brazen and ironic theatricality which over the years has become a stylistic signature. In 2022 we told how the ending of “I cut your throat” was often “rewritten” live, transforming the verse into a mischievous game, suspended between provocation and complicity with the audience.

Along that same line, too Olly, engaged in a tour of sold out arenas, today inserts small signs, details that make the difference in his way of being in the spotlight. He plays with his body: see this big boy, for example, what he does ballets and playing with posture is fun. In the finale of “Stupid nostalgia”, to make the piece that won him Sanremo less stately, just before closing with the verses “it was all my life…”the Genoese singer-songwriter adds a gesture. With his fingers he forms a “triangle”, a sign that Vasco has been using for some time, and he does it with a smile that is both ironic and cheeky. It’s about a “stupid vagina”. He also leaves the words hanging: “it’s been all…life.” The moment, filmed by the public, went viral. It happened in Milan, it happened in Turin: videos shared, relaunched, commented.

It is not just a tribute, but a personal reworking. Olly absorbs and returns, adapting that gesture to a new context, to his generation, to his language. In this sense, “the triangle” with the fingers becomes more than a simple gesture: it is a bridge between two ways of understanding the stage. On the one hand Vasco, master of transforming every concert into a collective ritual full of ambiguity and expressive freedom. On the other Olly, who today seems to want to push precisely in that direction, building an increasingly direct, playful and shared relationship with his fans. In the finale, at the Milan Forum, he also appeared above a toilet while reading the newspaper “Tutta vita”, another way to exorcise success.