It’s a relatively minor pool of talent, despite Italy’s overpowering contributions to culture, fashion and art. After winning 2021’s Eurovision contest for “Zitti e buoni”, rock band Måneskin rested on a different song, a cover, “Beggin’”, then faded away. Lady Gaga and Madonna (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta and Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, respectively) have Italian heritage, sure, but will there be another Raffaella Carrà in our lifetime?
In comes ditonellapiaga (née Margherita Carducci), icy and sleek in sunglasses and a black gown performing “Che fastidio!” for the 2026 Sanremo Music Festival, the winner of which will represent Italy later in Eurovision. The roaring, zipping track takes its aim problems small (party small-talk, Milanese fashion) to big (Italian politics) all with the same droll cry – “how annoying!” It’s a comedy of errors, but points to our collective confusion with the AI slop era, where everything fake is real and everything real seems fake. “I no longer know what's normal,” she ends the song. “Am I the crazy one?”
This grit runs through Miss Italia, ditonellapiaga’s third album, a rollicking and buzzy collection of ten pop tracks about the Italian dream and all it misrepresents. Naming the album a symbol of glammed-up perfection is a sly nod to its opposite – and the frenetic title track suggests it’s not too pretty on the other side, either. It’s impossible to try and win over everyone, and the album revels in its own mess. Its first words, on “Sì lo so”, are her admitting she’s an alcoholic, bastard, a liar… “ma non ti riguarda”. (“That’s none of your business”). Her stage name is a portmanteau of “finger in the wound,” an Italian idiom for pouring salt in the wound – and she starts with herself.
With the record almost wholly in Italian, it can be hard to parse out what she means (despite my Duolingo schooling), yet pop music remains a universal language. On the Baltimore club of “Tropicana hotline,” she lambasts journalists aching for a scoop, maybe giving us more glamour and passion than the profession deserves. But it’s a two-way street: the hungry star and the reporter who hangs onto every word. Could we be more complex than “vultures”? She sings in a quiet hush: “È un segreto tra noi. Da condividere con chi vuoi” (“It's a secret between us / To share with whoever you want”). Later, on a soaring rock outro, she admits that there’s a queasy pleasure in being talked about. All publicity is good publicity, as they say.
Elsewhere on the album, reality isn’t so turbulent. The sugary “Le brave ragazze” (“The good girls”) is a tribute to adolescence, with its wonderfully clunky Italian-English mash-up (“Throwback, 2013, MSN, Chiude la scuola, Just Dance, Italia 1, TV trash”). The tireless anxiety of “Prima o poi” (“Sooner or later”) ferries to the pop-rock of “Io” (“I”), where she chastises herself – “Io non devo farne un dramma” (“I don’t have to make it a drama”). But seems like she can’t help it. On “Hollywood,” she regrets turning herself into a machine cog for the bright lights of fame, falling in line with tracks like JADE’s “Angel Of My Dreams” or Zara Larsson’s “Saturn’s Return”. She sings over melancholy, ringing trip hop: “Per te sono come tu mi voi / Sull’olro del baratro / Ma non mi voglio più” (“For you I’m the way you want me / On the edge of the abyss / But I don’t want myself anymore”). The Miss Italia regalia has lost its luster.
But all of this self-laceration might have its limit. On “La verità” (“The truth”) she realizes that playing a character has left little room for herself, remedied by clubs and parties. “La verità, vorrei farci l'amore / Però so farle solo la guerra” (“The truth, I’d like to make love to it / But I only know how to wage war against it”). It's a smart move to end the album of play-pretend by throwing her hands up and admitting, But what do I know?
Blurring the lines between self and persona, ditonellapiaga balances a tightrope on the album, one of the most crystalline and savvy of the year so far. Every song is a shtick, but there’s always pangs of sincerity – reality fracturing on “Che fastidio!”, the grubby famegrabs on “Tropicana hotline”. It’s a risk to dress mystique up in these poppy, sticky soundbites, inviting the listener to suspend disbelief along with her. Depending on any one of its sparkling perspectives, Miss Italia is a blueprint to stardom or the warning to leave while you still can.
