Some victories are unexpected, others come at a great cost. When Måneskin scooped the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest with “Zitti e buoni” (which translates to “Shut Up and Behave”), a dopey controversy threatened to overshadow their celebration.
Rewind four years to the Rotterdam Ahoy. As the cameras visited each national team, David was spotted leaning into the Italian squad’s table. It was absolutely nothing, or everything. The video went viral, headlines rang out that the Roman had been snorting lines.
An investigation was launched before Måneskin could enjoy their Eurovision spoils. Ultimately, an investigation ordered by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) found that David was right. The rocker didn’t take drugs during the grand final, right there as hundreds of millions of pop music fans watched on.
As scandals go, this one was as dumb as a hammer.
“It was extremely funny. Like genuinely extremely funny, also because I found out during the (winner’s) press conference, so it was like pretty shocking,” David recounts in a Zoom with Rolling Stone AU/NZ. “But I never felt like it changed anything or stained anything. I feel like it was way smaller than it could have been in, we shut it down pretty quickly. I don’t feel like it ruined anything, honestly. It just a funny, funny, funny setback. Unfortunately, I must admit I’m not that mental.”
With that unusual moment in the rearview, Måneskin enjoyed a full-throttle career lift-off like few Eurovision winners, ABBA aside. In the UK, a country that takes an arch view to Eurovision like its a national sport, Måneskin made chart history.
In quick succession, Måneskin landed three UK top 40 hits. With “I Wanna Be Your Slave” and “Beggin”, Måneskin became the Italian act to have two Top 10s on the UK singles chart, simultaneously. “Zitti e buoni”, with which the band won the Sanremo Music Festival in March 2021, earning them honours to represent Italy at Eurovision, went to No. 17.
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Two years later, their album Rush did what its title suggests and powered into the UK top 10, at No. 5.
This year, a different kind of rush.
David releases the solo album, Funny Little Fears (via Sony Music) on Friday, May 16th, and will support it with a global tour that visits Australia in October for dates in Sydney and Melbourne, produced by TEG [MJR].
“There’s no connection between me doing a tour anything related with the band (splitting),” he insists. “My goal was to do a full solo project. And live, it’s a fundamental part of a project. I’m lucky enough to have the chance to do a work tour, so why not do it?”
David’s trek includes dates in Europe, North America, South America and Asia. On his last visit to these shores in 2023, he fronted Måneskin for a sold-out jaunt.
Funny Little Fears houses the previously release singles “Born With A Broken Heart” and “Silverlines”, produced by Labrinth. The album, “it’s my most personal work so far. I felt the need to write from a different perspective to imagine everything from a different perspective and be as truthful myself as a could possibly be,” he explains.
David worked with “hundreds of different people but the album comes down to seven or eight because I’m very relationship-based in the way I work, so I truly selected people for how we would click musically, but also on a very strictly personal level. I worked with people that I consider friends today. This also shines through the project because I was always in a room where I felt not only allowed, but also comfortable and safe to share some real thoughts instead of watered-down stuff.”
Some would-be collaborators, however, failed the dickhead test. “I also worked with more ‘famous class’ producers, but they were not very nice people, so they didn’t make the records,” he admits.
The timing of David’s release shouldn’t come as any surprise. Funny Little Fears drops as Eurovision 2025 reaches its climax, this time in Basel, Switzerland.
“It was definitely quite crazy and intense,” he says of the 2021 win, “and it was also heavily unexpected. Everything that happened around that was remarkable, for sure, from us winning to everything that happened after that and for the attention that our victory brought. A lot of people are now taking (Eurovision) seriously because we’ve proven that it is actually a very legit platform.”
Damiano David’s 2025 Australia Tour
October 22nd — Enmore Theatre, Sydney
October 24th, The Forum, Melbourne
Tickets via Ticketek or damianodavidofficial.com
SBS’s exclusive Eurovision coverage will air live between Wednesday, May 14-Sunday, May 18 at 5am AEST on SBS and SBS On Demand
