12:40 CEST: Rehearsal 4: 🇸🇲 San Marino - Gabry Ponte – Tutta L’Italia
Onward to San Marino, and legendary DJ Gabry Ponte with Tutta L’Italia. It’s our second song of the season that’s about Italy but not BY Italy – to confuse next week’s commentators even further, this track took us in and out of the ad breaks at Italy’s Sanremo Festival back in February, but then joined the lineup for Una Voce Per San Marino by popular demand.
Those of you old enough to remember 1999 (*waves*) may remember the global dance megahit Blue (Da Ba Dee) by Eiffel 65. That was also Gabry Ponte, but he’s got Eurovision credentials too – in 2022 he was a credited songwriter on the Austrian entry Halo by LUM!X feat. Pia Maria.
So Gabry is no stranger to an audience of millions and a big stage, and he’s 100% owning this one. The focus, as we saw at Una Voce Per San Marino, is mainly on Gabry himself in a silver jacket, against a backdrop of pulsing lights and graffiti on the LED wall. Gabry’s decks are huge and look like they’re made from mirrored panels that reflect even more pulsing lights, but the dancers we saw at Una Voce Per San Marino are gone, replaced by two instrumentalists who play the accordion and the tambourine.
This is such an interesting and unusual staging concept for Eurovision – a performance where the masked vocalists are not the main focus. The only other example we can think of is Norway’s Nocturne in 1995, where the fiddler was the main focus rather than the singer – add any other suggestions in the comments!
Either way, this feels like a rousing football chant of a song, and it’s easy to imagine the crowd being caught up in the infectious energy of it next week. Part of the lyrics translate as “Let us dance with a glass in our hands/Then tomorrow we’ll regret saying I love you.” Very much feels like a night at Euroclub.
🔥 PYRO update! flame jets and fireworks, with added smoke jets in the final chorus and a firework finish. The pyro store is now EMPTY.
IT'S GREYSIE IT'S PARTY