“Today everything is cool, but I’m normal, even a little loser, I like to write songs and that’s it.” Alfa’s normality is a 22-year-old girl “with the same paranoia and anxieties as my peers” who found her “best friend” in music. This summer, he almost earned a platinum record for “Beautiful”, a single that peaked at number five on the Fimi/Gfk charts and also reached Italy’s top 50 on Spotify. “We published it as an independent company and I am honored to see this feat. It was real word of mouth.”
Text comes from disappointment in love: “A year ago I wrote a poem for a girl who molested me, stopped answering calls and texts.” Has it reappeared now? “Yes, he wrote to me that he liked the song, but this time I added it.” At concerts, when Alpha sings “Bellissimissima”, he chooses a girl from the audience and invites her to the stage: “Every time the video of these moments becomes viral, and this helps the song a lot.” There are no live performances either. marriage proposals: “I’ve counted three so far and I never thought my music could be so transversal. I also saw a 50 year old lady in the supermarket singing “Bellissimissima”. He didn’t recognize me, and I prefer it to be that whoever has the most famous face in his songs is subjected to absurd pressure.”
Genoese, born in 2000, Andrea De Filippi, becoming Alpha so that his classmates wouldn’t recognize him when he posted songs on YouTube, he got his first results in 2018 with “Cin Cin”: “I started Bocconi and dropped everything. My mom got scared but changed her mind when she saw 3,000 people on my live broadcast.” Two records and a pandemic later, the short-term goal is a lot of apprenticeship: “I have over 30 shows scheduled this summer, primarily for growth. I want to improve because social media and digital communication is good, but my dream is to play live.”
As the autotuning debate rages on, he goes in the opposite direction, with a clear voice and a melody reminiscent of Giovanotti’s “Ragazzo fortunato” or Giovanotti’s “Bella”: “I used to use autotune on two songs and it fascinates me, but not live, I want to sing straight.” Even his image is devoid of special effects: “I tried to be cool, collaborate with rappers, but I didn’t feel comfortable. I’ve always been a bit of an outsider: short, fat, shy. I have a history of bullying. I want to be normal, in a good way. So is Ed Sheeran.”
If already in the past, in matters of persecution, collaborates with the non-profit organization Helpis, Alfa tries to convey positive thoughts to people in her songs. And about Generation Z, he says: “We are a fragile and intractable generation, we have our own values, such as ecology or equal love, but we are not connected with politics. However, I believe that we have a desire to improve.”
He will be working on a new album in the coming months., a “folk music journey” that would also take him to Nashville. Then, on February 24th, the first arena, the Assago Forum awaits him: “It could be the first arena, it could be the only arena, so it has to be the most beautiful performance of my career to date. I’m happy that it happened step by step, I want to get there with my luggage”
Between them lies San Remo and a disappointment to be mended.: last year at the youth competitions he had to withdraw due to illness. “Of course I won’t try Sanremo Giovani again and don’t want to get involved in strategies. But obviously the Festival is a dream, also because I watched it with my grandparents.”