French Saints in Sanremo 2024: “We leave secrets to be solved”
Alessandro De Santis and Mario Francese, or the French Saintsto explain their way of understanding music, they cite a band that has championed harmony, adrenaline and unpredictability: Twenty One Pilots. “In their live shows and also in their music there is something elusive – they say – the songs they perform live always have something different from those you can listen to on record. They offer space for the listener’s power of interpretation. We like to leave secrets to be solved, that the public can find more interpretations of what we do. We love the idea that music can be a treasure, to reach and make one’s own”.
The piece they present on the stage of the Sanremo Festival is a photograph of their poetics, it is sexy, sinuous, popular, fine. “At Sanremo Giovani we presented ‘Occhi tristi’ which is a side of who we are, a faster and more powerful business card – they underline – while ‘Love in the mouth’ is a denser ballad which is enhanced thanks to the orchestra”. And here too the words are free, they are windows overlooking a world that the listener can build and imagine: “You left me with love in my mouth without doing it on purpose, these are the last drops of rain, let’s slide over roofs before falling to pieces”. Is it autobiographical? “Each word is linked to a specific life situation, but we don’t like the idea of going into details or be specific,” they smile.
In 2022 the group won the sixteenth edition of X Factor Italy and published the EP “in fieri”, staged in 2023 in their first club tour. “At the beginning of our journey they told us that we were unclear – they remember – and it was true, we mixed many sounds and genres and perhaps we didn’t have a real direction. You can still find our very first pieces around, we go from ska to reggae without a solution of continuity. Then we refined everything, despite having many influences and this clarifying operationwhen we arrived in a television context like that of the X Factor, it helped us: our songs are little trailers, they want to arouse curiosity and leave the listener free to travel with their mind following their feelings. At the same time we feel pop and we want to make pop.”
Arriving among the Bigs via Sanremo Giovani gives awareness. “And also legitimacy – they continue – it’s true that we have apprenticeships and several tours behind us, we have our own audience, but if we hadn’t gone to the Youth, where we felt the weight of the match, we would have felt uncomfortable. Now at Ariston we have nothing to lose, but everything to gain. And this feeling gives us strength.” On the covers evening they will sing, with Skin, “Hallelujah”. “We like challenges, we like the idea of covering what shouldn’t be covered – they conclude – on X Factor we did ‘Creep’ by Radiohead, for example. But even in this case we are fascinated by the choice of song, because it is a contradictory song. She entered the common imagination in a gentle way, we listen to it during weddings and think it’s ‘spiritual and otherworldly’, but in reality it focuses on issues such as sex and life. We like this ambivalence, plus Skin, with his incredible voice, will give us great support.”
