Mahmood at Sanremo 2024: “I’ll tell you about the wounds I’ve overcome”
It’s not the one from “Money” or even the one from “Chills” with Blanco, the two songs that allowed him to triumph as many times. What he will bring to the Ariston stage “Tuta gold” is a new Mahmood. “The song is a journey between the present and the past, I wrote it this summer after a four-day rave near Berlin – he says – it was born outside a tent shared with friends, it talks about a finished relationship and moments less happy which then, once overcome, allowed me to become stronger. There is my way of telling life and feelings. It’s a piece of “street”, urban, but I’m not a rapper. This is why there are so many elements of mine, personal, like the references to flowers and sugar”. And he also returns to talk about his father and their complicated relationship, just five years after “Soldi”. “I do it because I have overcome certain wounds. In the song I also talk about when they gave them to me outside of school. There is the past, as I was saying, but also the present. Today I perceive myself as older and more maturethose pains are memories,” he underlines.
There’s no two without three?
Still on the subject of the Sanremo Festival: there are those who bet “three out of three”. “If I win a third time, the people in this round will throw tomatoes at me… They can’t stand seeing me anymore – laughs Mahmood – ‘Tuta gold’ is not ‘Money’ and it is not even ‘Chills’, it is a piece that represents me, but at the same time new. I won’t hide from you that, if it were up to me, I would return to the Ariston stage every year. That theater changed my life forever. But not for a question of ego. Simply, when you believe so much in a song, you want as many people as possible to hear it. Sanremo offers this great opportunity.” The piece is a fundamental piece of his new album. Out on February 16th, intimate and introspective, “In the beds of others”, this is the title, is a search into the mysterious depth of feelings. The album will be presented with a long European and Italian tour, starting on April 4th and ending with two dates in Italy, at the Fabrique in Milan, scheduled for May 17th and 18th.
The new album and the cover
“The personal space of the bed becomes an amplifier of common emotions, it is a place and a symbol where everything happens: we sleep, we dream, but we also stay awake to think, suffer, love, read, observe, and time takes on various speeds – says the singer-songwriter – in the confines of the bed we confront ourselves and explore human relationships. The microcosm made of sheets and pillows becomes a life setting, the metaphor of a home where you can take refuge, a safe place where you know you can always return.” Among the anticipated collaborations is the one with Tedua and Chiello in the song “Paradiso” and the one with the internationally renowned Belgian artist Angele.
A symbolic track of the album is “Nel tua mare”. “It is a very important song for me, there is also a sound reference to the cover that I will bring to the Ariston, namely ‘Come è profound il mare’ by Dalla – he reveals – ‘Nel tuo mare’ recalls one of my most important love stories, it is an intimate, visceral piece. It focuses on the difficulties in accepting that something you love, at a certain point, must be let go. ‘How deep is the sea by Dalla (he will perform it accompanied by the Tenores of Bitti Remunnu ‘e Locu, a historic tenor singing group), instead, it is a hymn to freedom of thought, which cannot have limits. It seems like a good message to bring to Sanremo.”