Of
Andrea Laffranchi
His album has been in the charts for more than 60 consecutive weeks
Olly’s 2025, also celebrated by New York Times which included «Balorda nostalgia» in the playlist of the best European songs of the year, started in 2024. The winner of the Sanremo Festival had laid the foundations of this special year in the previous months. «Tutta vita», the second album of the Genoese singer-songwriter’s career, had climbed the charts in autumn, driven by the ratings of Gen Z. The Ariston stage was the cultural detonator, the moment that transformed him into a national-popular figure.
Although Olly’s, both in terms of streaming and live, are enormous, let’s try to get away from the logic of numbers. Suffice it to say that, on the one hand, his album has been in the charts for more than 60 consecutive weeksand that, on the other, to find tickets for one of his concerts you need a recommendation in the paradise of ticketing platforms.
Olly, real name Federico Olivieri, has become the musical character of 2025 by dismantling paradigms. The first is that of musical genre. It hasn’t happened since 2019, with Ultimo, that the best-selling/listened to album of the year was that of a singer-songwriter. Rap continues to be dominant in our charts, but artistically it shows signs of tiredness. In the United States, hip hop culture is declining: at the end of October there was a week without rap in the Billboard Top 40. It hasn’t happened since 1990. Will the trend arrive in Italy too? It will take some time, but it’s likely. Olly, who steals the autotune from that world to modernize the songwriting, is the canary in the mine, the alarm bell (or the bell of liberation). «I also did rap, then with Juli (the producer, ndr) I discovered a more organic way of making music. I don’t analyze the market too much, but it’s nice that the desire to listen to authentic songs is returning,” he said.
A sociological reading can also be given to the phenomenon. Years of toxic masculinity, built on bitch, money and ego trips, have tired us. Olly goes against the trend of the imagination of urban artists. Popularity is not revenge and redemption, the logic of one against (and better than) all does not pay: Federico shows himself for what he is. Behind his explosive rugby player physique and good family (mother a magistrate, father a lawyer), there are a thousand fragilities and no certainties.
His language has a contemporary sensibility. Instead of hiding behind the justification of the man who is not responsible for what the artist says, at the time of Giulia Cecchettin’s femicide he had changed a controversial passage of his «Never e poi mai»: «The day I find her I will either marry her or kill her». «A very unfortunate sentence written as a child – he explained -. A human being with a brain can grow up and understand that a sentence like that should never be uttered again.” He doesn’t even play at being a sex symbol, despite having appeal to Gen Z and the mothers of his fan base. He takes his friends everywhere, even in Sanremo he had rented a house for them, and rather than social evenings in private clubs you see him doing gypsies to feel like “an idiot, sometimes knowingly, sometimes not”.
Olly is also an exception in applying business rules. Few appearances, few words. His no to the Eurovision Song Contest surprised everyone, but if the carousel is running well, what need is there to speed up? «It may seem like arrogance, but there are systems I believe in and others where I don’t feel comfortable. TV scares me. The reality where I must be able to exist is between me and my audience.” This all revolves around the songs. Without those there would be no Olly. In those there is the freshness of his 24 years and the depth of someone who has a few more. «I have had a deep sensitivity since I was born – he had underlined –. My family taught me respect and love: I always ask myself one more question, but the further I go the fewer answers I have.”
However, he found three: «In my career everything is going in the right box thanks to three elements: talent, and I train it; desire to do, and if I don’t have it, Juli or someone else on the team will bring it out; luck, and the ass arrived.” In recent weeks he was on Lake Como, with friends, bitters and cigarettes on the table, writing down songs. What if 2025 was just the anticipation of 2026?
December 28, 2025
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