Francesco Renga is preparing for his eleventh appearance at the Sanremo Music Festival, a record for this year’s competition. The veteran singer-songwriter, who won in 2005 with “Angelo,” approaches each participation with a different perspective, viewing the festival as a constantly evolving experience.
“Every time I’ve come to Sanremo, it’s been with a different motivation,” Renga explained. Reflecting on past festivals, he admits there’s one he’d happily revisit – but not for the reasons one might expect. “Perhaps I’d skip the COVID year… It was difficult. The inability to move around became such an obsession that it made you appreciate traffic, interviews, and all those things that are normally a nuisance.”
His 2005 victory with “Angelo” was, in his own words, somewhat accidental. “That time, my participation was a coincidence. We’d released an album and a single that were doing well, and we weren’t even thinking about the Festival. Bonolis, who was the host, called me and convinced me to do it.” The unexpected invitation proved fruitful, launching “Angelo” to the top of the charts and solidifying Renga’s place in Italian music history.
This year, however, feels different. Renga describes it as a “Sanremo of new beginnings,” coinciding with his signing to a new record label – a development he calls an “epiphany.” His song, “Il meglio di me” (The Best of Me), tackles a surprisingly vulnerable theme: accepting and confronting one’s flaws.
“The song speaks to something simple and revolutionary,” Renga says. “We live in a time where we’re accustomed to hiding what doesn’t work, for fear of falling apart. But I believe that by looking at the worst parts of ourselves, we can truly change. It’s not the other person who needs to fix what’s wrong and take on the darkness, but *you* who needs to go through it. The best of us doesn’t come from denying the worst, but from looking it in the eye and disarming it. It’s an invitation to emotional responsibility, to not running away.”
The theme of confronting one’s shadows is deeply personal for Renga. He acknowledges a history of avoidance, particularly in his relationships. “Sometimes it still happens, but I’m at a turning point, a new awareness. I needed to confront things with the women in my life, my daughter and her mother (Ambra Angiolini), to get to this point.”
He admits to past difficulties in maintaining relationships, attributing it to unresolved grief stemming from the loss of his mother when he was just 17. “I started running away when my mother died. It was a loss that marked my entire life and distorted my relationships with other women: I experienced it as an abandonment.”
The question of whether he “ran away” from his relationship with Ambra Angiolini is met with a candid response. “Yes… We hurt each other… It wasn’t easy, but we’ve resolved everything now.” He speaks with a sense of closure, suggesting a mutual understanding has been reached.
Even his departure from Timoria, the rock band with which he launched his career and first appeared at Sanremo in 1991, was, in a way, an escape. “After my mother’s death, the family had disintegrated: my twin sister got married, my brother moved in with someone, and my father moved to Sardinia for work. I was left alone in Brescia and was struggling to make ends meet. The band was a refuge. With Timoria, I had erased other points of reference: I lived only with them. Leaving the band was a graceful escape. Then life brought me other satisfactions, and at that moment I began to wonder what that way of hurting oneself hid.”
Renga acknowledges the historical tension between rock bands and Sanremo, recalling how bands like Litfiba and CCCP viewed the festival as a betrayal of their artistic integrity. Timoria, however, proved that a rock band *could* succeed on the Sanremo stage. “It was a scandal for the scene. I pushed for it because we had a beautiful song, Omar Pedrini wrote brilliantly… The press invented the critics’ award for young artists for us. I went to collect it alone because everyone else had already gone home, thinking it was over. My record executive told me, ‘I’ll let you sleep in Zucchero’s suite.’ I only remember saying, and I still can’t believe it today, ‘This is the best thing that’s happened to me in the last 15 days.’”
The music industry has undergone a seismic shift with the rise of streaming, and Renga acknowledges the challenges this presents for artists of his generation. “Our generation of artists isn’t having a bright moment since the market changed. We’ve tried to find a language that’s usable by this new market, and often, including myself, we’ve made some crazy mistakes. Singing a song using the language of a teenager just can’t work. This time, I’ve found a combination of my vocal style and more modern writing, while respecting my history.”
Renga’s return to Sanremo isn’t just about the competition; it’s about a new chapter, a new label, and a new willingness to confront the complexities of life and love. “Il meglio di me” is a testament to that journey, a song that invites listeners to embrace their imperfections and find strength in vulnerability.
