Sanremo – it’s like a musical test match!

I normally eschew Sanremo because I haven’t got the energy to devote five nights to an interminable show full of songs and “fun” in a language I can’t understand. Having been on the stage in November (and the Ariston is tiny, by the way) and the fact that two friends of this site said ” Go on – it’ll be a laugh” – I decided to watch.

It’s everything I thought it was, and considerably more so.  It’s mental.  Amadeus, who is retiring as show supremo after this year, runs a reasonably tight ship.  But it’s also full of baffling mayhem (John Travolta looking like a WWE star doing the chicken dance outside to a multitude of people, and then rescinding the rights cos he looked “silly”).  Amadeus has his mates come on and present with him snd somehow, in all the mayhem, there are songs sung throughout the week as well – best move onto them hey?

How does this all work then?

The first night had all 30 songs sung normally.   Nights two and three had fifteen each sung again. Night four was “covers and duet” night where all 30 sang songs from the past with a guest performer.  All of these had voting elements within them which are too complex to go into on this website!, By the time Saturday night came around, we had a ranking from the first 4 nights, coupled with televoting on the 30 songs, sung once again(!), to give us the following ranking :

Then the phone lines were opened *again*, and the public voted in their millions with bars in Naples giving discounts if Geolier would get your vote!.  This had an effect, seemingly, because he won 60 percent of the televote, normally enough to win any national final.  But this is Sanremo, it’s not a traditional National Final.  It’s the Italian song festival so the Professional jury were allotted 33 percent of the vote and the Demoscopic jury another 33 percent.   All of this mathematical shenanigans meant the final result was:

And so Angelina gets to represent Italy with “La Noia” after, presumably, romping home with the juries but leaving the televoters of Naples’ bars distinctly pissed and unimpressed and the rest of us mildly relieved.