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Italy’s Eurovision 2025 entry is many things: poetic, glam, quietly rebellious — and perhaps the most low-key rock ‘n’ roll thing to grace a contest now powered by hydraulic platforms and LED floors. Enter Lucio Corsi: a 31-year-old singer-songwriter from Grosseto, Tuscany, who looks like he fell out of a Marc Bolan tribute act and wandered into Sanremo by accident.
Tonight, Corsi takes to the stage in Basel with Volevo Essere Un Duro (“I Wanted to Be a Tough Guy”), a track as lyrically tender as it is visually eccentric. He performs 14th in the running order — a sweet spot for visibility — but don’t expect pyros or wind machines. Expect oversized amps, a harmonica, a bolero jacket held together with actual crisps (yes, really), and possibly the only Eurovision lyric this year that references tears and black-and-white cowboy films.
Tuscany’s Wild West Poet
Lucio Corsi is not your typical Eurovision act. Raised in the Maremma region — what he calls “Italy’s Wild West” — Corsi grew up surrounded by trees, horses, and a profound sense of outsiderness.
He’s the son of a painter mother and a leather craftsman father. His early influences include The Blues Brothers, which first got him interested in music. He’s also previously described his emotional connection to nature: “I have an infatuation with trees because I’ve always been surrounded by them. I have an oak tree near my house that has been my reference point since I was a child”.
Sanremo, harmonica hijinks, and rule bending
Corsi wasn’t supposed to be here. He came second at Sanremo 2025, and only stepped up to Eurovision duty when winner Olly declined. But unlike many second-placers handed the mic, Corsi didn’t water anything down.
In fact, he immediately tested the contest’s rules by insisting on playing his harmonica live. Under Eurovision’s regulations, only vocals can be performed live. Everything else is pre-recorded. Corsi spotted a loophole.
“The harmonica doesn’t need to be amplified through a jack,” he explained during the 16 May press conference. “I’m not trying to be controversial. I simply asked if it could be done because it’s amplified by the microphone, as the voice is the only live element allowed. I thought, ‘We’re on a stage, and if there’s a chance to play an instrument, I want to do it’”.
So, in a contest increasingly built around track-synced choreography and immaculate sound design, Lucio Corsi will play a harmonica live. Eurovision, but make it outlaw folk.
The song: glam on the outside, fragile on the inside
Volevo Essere Un Duro sounds like a glam rock anthem. But listen — or better yet, read the on-screen subtitles. It’s a song about pretending to be tough while quietly falling apart. About being a man, whatever that means, and not quite managing it.
To make the performance more accessible, Italy is running the English translation on screen during the live show.
“We aimed for clarity and immediacy rather than complexity,” Corsi told Billboard when asked about the decision to keep things simple and poetic.
The song’s instrumentation — performed tonight with full-size amps, a distorted piano, and no visible dancers — is a throwback to when Eurovision was more song contest and less stunt arena.
Guitar in one hand, press pass in the other
On 16 May, Corsi gatecrashed the press centre with a surprise performance. Just him, a guitar, his harmonica, and his long-time musical partner Tommaso Ottomano. No staging, no drama. Just voice and vibe.
“When I’m travelling, I always have with me my friend, photographer, English teacher — Francis Delacroix. I do everything,” he joked during his Eurovision podcast appearance.
If you’re picturing some polished media entourage, think again. Corsi’s crew is a handful of mates, a suitcase full of fraying jackets, and one camera.
Win? lose? who cares?
“It’s not a competition. It makes no sense how one can compete in music. It’s not a sport,” Corsi told Billboard, just in case anyone thought he was gunning for the trophy.
What matters to him isn’t the scoreboard. It’s the exchange of ideas, stories, culture. He’s spent time in Basel chatting with Portugal’s Napa and striking up backstage conversations with Australia’s Gojo and Estonia’s Tommy Cash.
And honestly? In a field of plastic politics and glittery clichés, Corsi might be the closest this year’s contest gets to actual art.
What comes next?
He’s already got a national fanbase. His recent shows in Milan were sold out. Reviews called him “a surrealist in sequins” and “a Benigni for the indie age”.
He knows this Eurovision moment is fleeting — but he’s grounded. “I’m happy to have been discovered only now,” he told La Repubblica. “It means I played a good game of hide-and-seek”.
Lucio Corsi won’t be everyone’s cup of espresso. But that’s not the point. In a sea of calculated pop perfection, here comes a Tuscan cowboy, singing about masculinity and heartbreak with a harmonica and a bag of crisps stitched to his blazer.
It’s messy. It’s romantic. It’s very, very Italian.
And it might just be the most interesting thing at Eurovision this year.
