Angelina Mango was proclaimed the winner of the 74th Sanremo Song Festival early on Sunday, triumphing with a track called La Noia (boredom).
The 22-year-old, the daughter of singer-songwriter Giuseppe Mango who died at the age of 60 in 2014, is the first female artist to prevail at the much-loved festival since Arisa won with Controvento ten years ago.
Victory means she will represent Italy at the Eurovision Song Contest.
Will this song have a chance at Eurovision? I’m going to say no. The song never seems to get off the ground, and with recent winners either being rock (Maneskin 2021), or last year’s winner, a power dance ballad. La Noia, on the other hand, never seems to hit the heights it ought to.
Of course, this is Eurovision, so anything can win!
Over 14 million viewers watched the final
The 2024 Sanremo Song Festival ended with a bang on Saturday night, attracting an average of 14.301 million viewers. That was 74.1% of the overall TV audience, the highest audience share on the final night since the 1995 festival presented by Pippo Baudo got 75.22%.
It was up from 12.256 million viewers, 66% of the audience, last year.
The 74th Sanremo Festival, the fifth presented by artistic director Amadeus, got big viewing figures every night since it started on Tuesday. The Festival has confirmed its popularity and status as a national institution and its importance as a platform for Italian music artists.
The 2024 festival will go down as a success, with some moments of controversy doing nothing to dent public interest and perhaps even increasing it.
These included Amadeus and comedian Fiorello getting John Travolta to do the fad Chicken Dance during a guest star appearance.
Some fans protested that the 71-year-old Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Pulp Fiction star had been humiliated. Fiorello subsequently admitted that it had been “one of the most terrible gags in the history of TV”.
Furthermore, Rai has said it is running legal checks for possible unauthorised product placement after Travolta appeared on stage wearing a brand of trainers whose logo had not been pixellated out.
