Coez, on the roofs towards a “more played” dimension
Slow sequence, without cuts, while the camera slides between the musicians, focuses on Coez, moves up a string triolingers on drums and on synthesizersreveals Colombre and then go back. In the background is Florencewith the Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, and the song you hear is “Nothing to hide”, one of the unpublished works of “From the Rooftop 3”, the next one coming May 22nd. It’s about the new chapter of the project inaugurated by the singer in 2016, a few months before the explosion of “I make a mess“, present in the album being released in a new guise, and then returning in 2022 with a second volume which further developed the format. This time the project wants to go even further, both in image construction that in sound research. “Parla piano / You Are My Lady”, reinterpreted together with California, completely changes register and plays with reverse shots, changes in focus and aerial shots, while “The greatest words” brings everything back to the ground, on the roof of the Grand Hotel Baglioni in Florence. Thus a new chapter is added to the work that brings together different languages, but with the same intention. No direct reference, Coez assures, to the Beatles’ legendary performance on the roof of Apple Corps, even if the singer showed up atmeeting with the media at the Anteo Palazzo del Cinema in Milan wearing a t-shirt entirely covered with the cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. After all, Who doesn’t end up mentioning the Fab Four? More explicit, however, is the quote that runs through “Nothing to hide“, where a verse openly recalls “The cannon woman” by Francesco De Gregori, also including in the new unreleased song that continuous dialogue between songwriting, rap writing and pop language which runs through the entire discourse of “From the Rooftop”.
At the origin, a space of diffusion
From the first chapter “From the Rooftop” represents the most parallel and intimate side of the world of Coez, born as almost artisanal project at a time when YouTube still represented the main one diffusion space for certain music that wasn’t on the radio. “At the beginning it was me with my guitarist and a loopstation on a roof,” says the Roman singer-songwriter, explaining how the idea was to strip the songs of their studio guise to bring them back to a leaner and, often, more emotional form. Since then the format has grown, it has become structured, it has even become an album, but it has never lost that “B-side” project nature that continues to exist alongside the main production.
Also for this reason Coez rejects the idea that “From the Rooftop” can be considered simply an acoustic set. Inside there are strings, pianos, synthesizers, synth bass, electric guitars and even the 808 used in the second chapter. “It’s not MTV Unplugged”, specifies Silvano Albanese – this is the real name of the singer-songwriter and rapper: “Because there we really talk about acoustic”. Rather it is a continuous exercise of rereading, which each time tries to move the songs towards a different dimension without emptying them of their identity.
With time, the format has given itself increasingly precise rules. “I set myself some rules and now I have to respect them”, explains Coez, recalling how from the second edition onwards unpublished works and collaborations also arrived: “Inside there is always a rap piece, a song more linked to my indie world and at least two covers“. It’s a delicate balance, because not everything created in the studio can really work in this capacity. “Maybe we come up with seven or eight songs, but it’s not a given that I’ll be able to interpret them well in such a bare form”, says the artist. For the third chapter, which contains eight songs in total, the selection work took even longer. Coez and Colombre, who produced and arranged the project together, worked on it for almost a year, discarding many songs and also leaving other collaborations behind, simply because certain songs did not find the right dimension once they were brought back to the roof. In the end, the definitive tracklist includes the unreleased “Nothing to hide”, a new version of “Faccio un casino”, “Blatte” by and with Colombre, “Cielo di sand”, “Parla piano / You Are My Lady” with California”, “Quelli come me”, the latest single “Ci takes a degree” for the new Zerocalcare series and “Le parole grandi”.
“I’m moving towards the more played world”
Inside the search for “From the Rooftop 3” it’s there too a broader change that concerns Coez’s artistic path. Looking at his recent discography, the singer-songwriter recognizes that he has progressively moved:
“If I look at what’s happening in my discography from the previous album, 2025’s ‘1998’, to today I definitely notice that I’m moving towards the more played world towards something more minimal”.
“I believe that in general I am moving towards this type of approach”, admits Silvano, underlining how the choice to work with Colombre is also linked to his ability to improvise and never do two identical takes. That’s right the direct recording, musical and visual, remains the heart of the project. Each performance is recorded without gaps, without the possibility of error, and this forces everyone to have an absolute level of concentration. “If one person makes a mistake, everything risks falling apart,” says Coez, explaining how that tension ends up creating the right climate and pushing everyone to work better. On a technical level, the format has grown enormously compared to the first chapter, born almost without means and with playbacks shot after recording the auditions in the studio. Yet the intent remained identical. “The goal is still to excite with the songs and make them reach you in a more intimate way”, the artist is keen to reiterate.
In this sense “From the Rooftop” becomes almost the opposite of the arena dimension. Coez compares the project to the relationship between arena and theatre, explaining that in large spaces the music must have more impact, while here everything is played on the details, on the voice, on the bass, on the piano that breathe together. From Rome, where the first two chapters were made, the project landed in Florencethe same city which will host the start of the new tour “Coez Live 2026 – From the Rooftop”, which will bring the format into the live dimension.
Furthermore, for Coez, every project always manages to open a door to the next. “I never see a project as the end of something, but indeed I often see that it’s a next step towards something new“, reflects the singer-songwriter responding to the asks if “From the Rooftop 3” is already laying the foundations for a new recording. The artist then explains:
“The album ‘1998’ helped me understand some things about this ‘From the Rooftop vol 3’. And probably this ‘From the Rooftop vol 3’ will help me understand some new things.”
As you grow up, Coez claims, the way you relate to music and your songs changes, and it is no longer just a matter of choosing a specific direction, but of understanding how a certain music makes you feel in the moment in which you are experiencing it. “Sometimes we continue to do things out of inertia“, observes Silvano: “Then at a certain point we discover that they no longer belong to us”.
Collaborations
Among the guests of the new chapter is Californiaformer female voice of Coma Cose, in “From the Rooftop 3” involved in “Parla piano / You Are My Lady”. The collaboration, says Coez, was born almost by chancewhile looking for someone who could really get into that type of nineties rap and those particular cadences. “I had this piece in mind, which dates back to 1998, but I was in a bit of a crisis because I didn’t know who to call to do a duet”, says the artist: “Then California made itself heard, she called me for another reason, and I took it as a sign of destiny”. It was born so spontaneously curiosity if the contact from Francesca Mesiano – this is the singer’s registered name – could be linked to Sanremo 2026given that California’s name had long circulated among possible participants in the Festival. “California and I spoke after Sanremo”, Coez immediately cuts in.
However, it is even more natural the link with Zerocalcare and “From the Rooftop 3”, which includes the previously released single “You need a degree“, included in the trailer and soundtrack of the new animated series “Two pennies”.
Coez and Zerocalcare, born Michele Rech, have known each other for years and the dialogue between the two has existed for some time, well before the Roman cartoonist’s Netflix productions. “Zerocalcare and I have known each other for a long time. Years ago I asked him if he was even willing to make me a minute of cartoons, long before he started learning to make them”, says the singer-songwriter, recalling then that Zerocalcare, despite linking part of his growth to the hardcore punk scene, is a “super fan of 883 and a lot of Italian popCoez adds: “Some time ago I made him listen to a piece of mine from the album ‘1998’ because it made me think of his first series. He told me frankly that he couldn’t do anything about it anymore because the series was out. Afterwards we met and he told me about the new series he was working on. So I made him listen to ‘It takes a degree’, which for me has a nineties vibe and a bit of 883, which went well with his idea. In fact, then he chose her“.
