Ditonellapiaga
Miss Italia

THE REVIEW

“In a world of John and Paul, we are Ringo Starr!”: Let's kick off with this quote from the song "Ringo Starr" by the excellent Pinguini Tattici Nucleari (since we're talking about quality music and not just Rock, I took the liberty of including this line from the well-known Pop song that finished third at the 2020 Sanremo Festival, back in the "distant" past before the sadly familiar Covid-19 pandemic), and circle back to what I like best: specifically, to an artist who, amid the mare magnum of mainstream or "big numbers" Pop, has impressed me so much recently that I've become a fan—unashamedly so.

So, taking the above verse as a starting point, in a world like today’s Italian Pop where the charts (and the hits) are dominated by the likes of Annalisa (we could discuss the quality of her songs, but that’s another story) or Elodie, the so-called “third way” could well be named Margherita Carducci, better known as Ditonellapiaga, Roman, born in 1997 (February 5, to be exact, so under Aquarius, by the way, just like a certain Piero Pelù—just to mention one of my biggest Rock idols), one of the brightest and most authentic stars in the firmament of Italian light (and not only light!) music of the Twenties of the new millennium.

In particular, my first contact with her and her art came back at Sanremo in 2022, when, as a total newcomer and almost a sort of “alien” not exactly coming from any talent show like Amici or X-Factor, I saw her perform that Pop track—so “contaminated” and full of unconventional ElectroPop sounds—called “Chimica” alongside Donatella “Dada” Rettore, a genuine icon of Italian Eighties Pop: a “strange couple” that, even though they finished sixteenth in the kermesse, nonetheless stirred up a lot of curiosity among insiders and not only for their energetic and irreverent performances, but above all for Margherita's already remarkable writing skills and stage presence. She had already demonstrated, in that instance, a charisma (in my view) and a blend of class and theatricality (her trademark, by the way) that I hadn’t heard in any Pop or Rock artists I’d listened to lately—except, of course, for the famous “sacred monsters” of both genres.

So you might all be wondering at this point: but is Ditonellapiaga just about “Chimica” and above all “Che Fastidio!”? Of course not! And the reason for that answer lies in her artistic journey, which began independently between late 2019 and 2020, when, after landing her first record deal with Dischi Belli/BMG, she began working with her small yet already inspired "work team" led by drummer/producer/best friend Alessandro Casagni, putting to good use her studies in acting and performance at DAMS, Link University in Rome. Starting with a few singles like “Parli” and a cover of Matia Bazar's “Per Un’Ora D’Amore” included in her first EP Morsi from 2021, as a preview to her debut album a year later, Camouflage, which also features "Chimica" in duet with Rettore (which I’ll explore in more depth in an upcoming review).

https://youtu.be/3VDyKPkzXFg?si=ZrxroTYYNxWbVjSW

Now let's get to the famous "where the bread is baked". After her first album Camouflage in 2022 and her second work Flash released in 2024 (on May 10th, to be exact!) (which I’ll also discuss separately), here we are with Miss Italia. This album was born from an artistic crisis in the Roman singer-songwriter, the result mainly of a period of disorientation after the famous “recoil effect” from Sanremo 2002. It’s the bet she herself won, with her immense artistic coherence that not only remained pretty much intact but also gave her that "qualitative leap" she probably needed as the final step to win over that segment of the public who, until then, even while appreciating her undeniable talents (an artist who can masterfully interpret someone like Ivan Graziani is something rare, by the way!), had seen her as “on the sidelines”, to paraphrase a line from one of the tracks on the album (one of the best among many) “Bibidi Bobidi Bu”.

https://youtu.be/DgpfScxHSfU?si=9JKWJ5oM1lfbsQCk

The album kicks off with the full-throttle ElectroPop of “Si Lo So”, a genuine “call to arms” from Margherita, where her beautiful vocal tone weaves between more rapped sections and slower moments, showing off her technical mastery as a “midfielder/party fighter”, as mentioned in one of the central lines of the song. But what kind of midfielder would she be, hypothetically, on a football pitch? In my view, she could be like a mezzala “à la Dejan Stanković” (spoken like a true Inter fan!) with the grit of a defensive midfielder as in “Tropicana Hotline” (with a lovely final touch of Rock in the outro) and, in the danceable-yet-not-at-all-trivial (with a hint of the “early” Morgan) “Prima O Poi” , up to absolute flashes of class as in the magnetic “Hollywood”, the album’s only ballad, where she skillfully dribbles between a superb first half with Jazz vocals front-and-center, and a second, ‘90s Trip-Hop section that feels straight out of any James Bond movie you might name.

Our journey through Margherita’s “therapy” (as she defined her work) continues with great tracks like "Le Brave Ragazze", the title-track "Miss Italia"—sure to get concertgoers dancing—and concludes with high-quality songs like “Io”, where the usual theatrical class of the “Margherita self” comes through as she talks to herself in front of an imaginary mirror, making peace with herself and her own vulnerabilities, and above all, “La Verità” (which could even be the title of a song by Vasco Rossi or Brunori SAS), which is, in fact, the moment of “catharsis” when she offers us an open ending for our own doubts and uncertainties—musically speaking, featuring a brief but much-appreciated electric guitar solo, evidence yet again of Margherita’s deep knowledge not only of Pop, but of music in general.

So, we’re dealing with an Artist with a capital ‘A’, multifaceted (also due to her public stances in defense of Palestine, and as a participant in the “No Kings” rally in Rome last March 27), and worth holding onto, if only because—thank goodness—she’s very, very different from the rest of the Italian Pop scene, which far too often is self-referential and spiraling around “easy success” at the expense too often of quality—content ever more reduced to, allow me, embarrassing conditions.