Firstborn: “Busy songwriting devastates my head”

You understand Primogenito’s strength while looking for references to mention in an introductory hat to one of his interviews: there are none. Gabriele Tosti, this is the real name of the Roman singer-songwriter, born in 2004, he doesn’t resemble anyone, he doesn’t recall anyone. He doesn’t imitate anyone. Someone may have seen him on stage May Day concert in Rome: Orange shorts, handkerchief tied around his neck like a signature rather than an accessory, military jacket on as if it were the uniform of an imaginary army. He sang “Sorry Catherine”, a single released a year ago, and in the middle of those lyrics that seem to come from a 70s singer-songwriter (“Sorry, Caterina if I walked in the wet / if I left too many footprints / on the parquet of your past”) there was something that wasn’t nostalgia: it was another code. As if the De Gregori of “Rimmel” had suddenly opened a chat with the Roman suburbs of 2026 (Firstborn is from Centocelle). This weekend he returned to MiAmi in Milan, where he launched “Hi neighbors, I’m moving in with you”. In the middle, the EP “Drowning in friendly waters” was released, title which in itself sounds like a sentimental contradiction: «I had two different projects. One was to be titled “Memoirs of a Misfit”, the other “Never so late did you change seasons”. In the end I did a least common multiple. In these six songs I talk about situations that are so much a part of your everyday life that in the end they start to bother you.”

Primogenito doesn’t write songs: he opens cracks in normality. The music, he says, arrived late and in an almost suspicious way. Three years ago it wasn’t there. Before, it simply wasn’t a world he truly inhabited. Then the Italian singer-songwriters arrived, and only after the Anglo-Saxon tradition, as if he had to recover a language never studied at school: «I thought I would rap. At school I did freestyle. I was more confident than others. But I wasn’t really a big rap listener. I listened to everything that had a pop tinge. I understood that what I was doing, however, was closer to pop songwriting than to rap. I also had my Bob Dylan era where I walked around with my mouth organ and flared jeans. But it didn’t last long». A sentence like this is enough to understand the type: one who passes through masks without ever making a nest in them. «Committed songwriting devastates my head. Boredom is not what I prefer,” he explains.

In the past, even before rap, there was the soccer: «I played as a pushing left back. Instead, with music the opposite of football. I feel more like a fantasist, free to touch certain things with disengagement. I have fun, which is what I didn’t do when I played football. That had become a frustration. I spent a year in Serie C. In D with New Florida.” The boy will do it, even if his shoulders are narrow, De Gregori himself sang. Influences are never declarations of belonging, but casual encounters that have become decisive obsessions. The Prince as an inevitable horizon, but also Ivan Graziani discovered thanks to Lucio Corsi: «The first modern singer-songwriter who inspired me. I went to see it in Arsita, 5 euro ticket, we even smoked a cigarette together. I said to myself: I want to do it too.” He writes his songs «in the bathroom, they are born raw». It’s a detail that defines him better than any artistic statement: Primogenito registers urgencies. And in fact he imagines his place in Italian pop without diplomacy: «I would like to be transversal, to reach as many people as possible directly. A national popular singer-songwriter, but also with an eye on alternative music».

The debut EP addresses various themes dear to Primogenito: from references to home and family, through the analysis of certain relational situations up to the search for an identity and one’s role in the world. It’s sort of Bildungsromana coming-of-age story. The sound is typically singer-songwriter with an alternative pop/rock streak coming from the 70s. But it doesn’t sound dated. Far from it. On today’s Italian music he cuts short: «It’s not that everything pisses me off. It’s just that no record excites me anymore. They all seem like playlists to me». Unlike many kids of his generation who are born as bedroom phenomena and who often, once outside, seem not to have the qualities to stand up to the stage space, he seems to have been built the opposite: a stage animal. After the performance at the Concertone and the one at MiAmi he announced a first important appointment, the8 October at the Monk in Romehis city: keep an eye on it.