Mahmood was the protagonist of a sold out concert in Amsterdam where he met journalists with whom he spoke about his successes, his apprenticeship, his difficulties and his future.
Mahmood in concert in Amsterdam (Photo by Walter Coppola @visioneprospettica)
Fresh from the concert at Paradiso in Amsterdam, one of the stops on his European tour, Mahmood talks about the sensations of these weeks, when after the Sanremo Festival he found himself with a sixth place but with the song that was numerically most successful among those of the Festival. Tuta Gold began to fly as soon as the Festival ended, appearing in the international charts and obtaining important numbers, with three platinum records and over 73 million streams on Spotify.
The success of Tuta Gold
“I feel lucky, I didn’t expect this mess – the singer-songwriter tells the journalists gathered in the basement of the Dutch club -. When Tuta gold started flying we woke up and asked ourselves if it was true.” Mahmood explains how Sanremo was an option that almost reached a closed list: “I didn’t have to go to Sanremo. I had written Tuta gold while I was in Sardinia, I wanted a song that made you cry and twerk at the same time, a baile funk: we changed five choruses and wrote the final version in Milan. We went to the studio with Ettorre, who made the melody. The thought of Sanremo was born at the end, we asked ourselves the fateful question: do you want to go?”.
The doubt of going to Sanremo
The answer was yes, although there was a doubt: “The doubt – explains Mahmood – was to go with Tuta gold, which for me was a summer single. Alternatively there was a song, a ballad that is not on the album, but after Brividi I didn’t want to go with another ballad, but with something I hadn’t done before. And anyway, once you sing a song on that stage you can sing it on all stages.” Sanremo was the turning point for Mahmood, who won the first time in the Baglioni Festival but who also owes a lot to Amadeus who wanted him together with Blanco, allowing him to win the second time: “The reaction to Sanremo was the sold out in eight hours of the Mediolanum. I would always go back to Sanremo., yes, even after Ama, I did the first one with Baglioni”.
Mahmood regains first position: Tuta Gold overthrows The Kolors in the radio rankings
The relationship with Money
The relationship with Moneya song that everyone asks him for all the time, remains excellent, even if in recent weeks he has heard that Tuta Gold has made an important leap and perhaps, today, it is even more awaited than that: “Today Tuta gold is the most requested, I’m managed to move Soldi from the last place in the lineup (she is now penultimate, before Tuta Gold, ed). The reaction of the people after Sanremo seems to me greater than what happened with Soldi, the reaction to Tuta gold was shocking”. For now the singer-songwriter is enjoying his European success, with the vclubs full and his music reaching a non-Italian speaking audience.
An EP in English thrown in the garbage
We ask him if perhaps language could be an obstacle to growth and Mahmood admits that he has written and is writing in English, indeed that a few years ago he even had an EP ready, when he went to work in the States, everything was ready, from the music to the artwork, then the project stopped: “A ep in English was ready, but it didn’t come out because it wasn’t cool enough for me, so I canceled it and let’s see if something similar happens in the future.”
The apprenticeship against the stress of success
In recent months some of the singer-songwriter’s colleagues they preferred to stop due to burnout, too much stress, too many responsibilities, difficulty in working with serenity, Sangiovanni is the emblem of this and it was from this that we started to talk about the apprenticeship that Mahmood did before the explosion and success: ” The only thing that can save you is training, it prepares you, it allows you to understand what to improve and why you can’t get that result.” The story falls on those years, the first, when he was a very young author who was trying to convince record companies to sign him.
“On the one hand it was devastating, in 2018 my musicians no longer wanted to write with me, we threw away songs, at a certain point a record company told me that a song was the worst piece I had ever written, but I think it was lucky otherwise I wouldn’t be here. I went to Universal every afternoon – continues Mahmood -, I had written Uramaki and Presi male (later sung by Michele Bravi) and they signed me as an author. In the first session with Dario Dardust we wrote Nero Bali, which was the first hit I wrote.”
Mahmood and no sayings for his career
Mahmood also spoke about the amount of no he has had to say over the years: “It’s difficult to count the no’s in recent years, they are as important as the yes’s. If I say no, however, it’s because I have in mind what I want to do, I have the image of myself in my head that I want to convey. What is my purpose? Last as long as possible.” And the no’s are also those said to some brands, even if the singer-songwriter’s reasoning broadens: “We’re talking about brands that can also help you enhance a message you want to convey. The first thing I look at is whether the project can be brought to a higher bar and at that point I say yes.”
Freedom of expression for rap
Finally Mahmood also talks about music, censorship and protocol, or the idea of the Undersecretary of Culture, Mazzi, to create a protocol regarding musical lyrics and in particular those of rap music: “I’m not for censorship of art, what counts is the freedom for an artist to express herself, therefore I say no to a protocol. Rappers tell what they have experienced and it is right that they tell it and also the way in which they do it should not be censored”. Regarding the possibility of singing with an artist without a criminal record, he explains: “If we talk about music I don’t look at a person, a mistake that many make. I would separate the person from the artist”.
Concerts in the Palazzetti
After the end of the European tour Mahmood will leave for concerts at summer festivals, an intermediate stop before arriving at the arena tours that he will hold next October. Mahmood, in fact, will be the protagonist on 21 and 22 October at the Mediolanum Forum in Milan (the first date is sold out), on 25 October at the Nelson Mandela Forum in Florence, on 27 October at the Palazzetto dello Sport in Rome and on 31 October at the Palapartenope of Naples.
Tags: Soldi Tuta Gold devastating period apprenticeship helps
