Matteo Romano: “The record market is ready to squeeze you”

The first EP has just been released Matteo Romano “Fake nostalgia”. The young singer-songwriter, born in 2002, made himself known first through Sanremo Giovani and then with participation at the Sanremo Festival 2022 with the song “Virale” with which he ranked eleventh. From that experience to today two years have passed, an eternity in the times of the record market of today. Matteo wanted to take some time to find himself and to write songs to believe in. And he succeeded, going in contrast to the mechanisms and dynamics of constant and obsessive production of today’s music. “This work comes at a time when I feel clarified as an artist – he explains – it is a declaration of intent. It’s a way of saying: I’ve been like this in these three years of my career. There has been a growth path, also demonstrated by the addition of new songs. I am in a highly inspired phase in which I feel that a new era is about to begin. In this project there is an ambivalence: I close the circle with the past and open a window onto the future. In fact, now I am experiencing a new moment of enthusiasm, stimulation and desire to get involved.”

“Fake nostalgia” is a clear photograph. Consisting of 9 tracks, including unreleased songs to discover and already known songs and loved by fans like the song that introduced him to the public “Concedimi” (double platinum disc), “Virale” (platinum disc), the collaboration with Luigi Strangis in “Tulipani Blu”, “Casa di Specchi” and the most recent “Assurdo”, “Finta nostalgia” contains the soul of a young singer-songwriter who day by day gets to know himself and his surroundings more and more, through strong emotions and relationships with people who, positively or negatively, undeniably leave their mark. “In this EP I wanted Matteo to be there at 360° – he continues – there is my deeper side because I am a ‘heavy man’ (he smiles, ed.), but also the more playful one because in the end I am a young boy who also loves to have fun. The truth is, I don’t feel like one thing. I’m traveling: in one, two weeks, I will still be different. ‘Fake nostalgia’ means this, I am no longer the same as the past, but I don’t deny anything, I have experienced different situations and I have grown, also telling myself through music. To photograph my two poles, that of yesterday and that of today, as songs I would choose ‘Virale’ and ‘Fake Nostalgia’they are two sides of the same coin that photograph my journey.”

Today “taking time” to make art seems like a chimera, but it is increasingly necessary. “Yes, attention to time is important, but attention to the quality of the music is above all the fulcrum – he underlines – I happened to get really angry about this issue: sometimes it seems like the music industry doesn’t realize that it takes time to do things well. I don’t believe that you have to write every day to reach maximum artistic expression, I believe more in metabolizing. For me there are many new generation artists who are giving importance to these aspects again. After the Sanremo Festival I actually said to myself: I don’t want to release something that I’m not convinced of. But I was in a blender: the me of the time kept repeating to publish, publish, publish. There was the desire to publish before the desire to express myself. That’s what he sent me in crush”.

Today Matteo has found a new balance, but the people around him had a substantial role along the way. “The record market is ready to squeeze you, it wants to get the most out of you to earn money, the quality of the music is not important – concludes Romano – I was lucky, I was surrounded by many who helped me. Me obviously today they are not outside the market (it is still under Universal, ed.), they are inside, but with the right awareness. The EP arrives just to let me know, at the right time. In times when you are engulfed by ‘publish, publish’ without really having anything to say, it is essential to have the right people by your side. My managers were (first Paolo D’Alessandro and then Giacomo Sabatino, the latter also manager of Alessandra Amoroso, ed.) when they advised me to take some space and so did my parents when they almost forced me not to drop out of universitykeeping our feet on the ground.”