The third of the big 5 countries in my countdown, Italy continue to go from strength to strength since their return in 2011 from a long hiatus. In the past 13 years, they’ve had their third win, two runners up placings and only two finishes outside the top 10. Last year was another success with returning artist Marco Mengoni improving on his previous top 10 result by finishing 4th. This year, Sanremo (the Italian musical festival) has given us a solo female artist, Angelina Mango, the first since 2016 and the first female solo Sanremo winner since 2014. Can she keep up Italy’s run of success?

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Angelina is a young singer-songwriter, and daughter of two famous Italian singers, who has come to prominence in the Italian music scene in the last couple of years with two singles in 2023 reaching the Italian top 10, and an extended play album reaching number 2 in the Italian album charts. At the end of 2022 she competed in a TV music talent contest where she was runner up overall and won the singing category, and then this year, she entered Sanremo with her song “La noia” and became the first female winner since 2014.

That 2014 winner didn’t actually represent Italy in the contest, but they did have a female representative that year. The 2016 Italian entry was female solo but she was the runner up at Sanremo, so I think Angelina may be the first female winner of Sanremo to go to Eurovision in the same year. There was a big expectation from the fandom that Sanremo would finally vote for a female winner, but they had pinned their hopes on another song, “Sinceramente” by Annalisa. That did do well, finishing in second, but Angelina was the winner by a big margin.

“La noia” is a really great track – it’s uptempo and catchy (good for Eurovision) but is also a genuinely great example of modern Italian pop. There’s a cheekiness and sassiness to the song and to Angelina’s delivery, and her vocals and performance are always top notch – from Sanremo itself to all the pre-parties, she really sells the song well. She’s one of the three co-writers of the song and has said of “La noia” that it was inspired in its rhythms by cumbia, which refers to the musical rhythms and folk dance traditions of Latin America.

While “Sinceramente” had been a favourite of fans before Sanremo, it’s safe to say that didn’t adversely affect opinion towards “La noia”. It has sat at the top of the Eurovision scoreboard app for the entire time since it won Sanremo – and with a clear lead at that. In the betting odds, Angelina has sat in that top group for the entire time I think, and was only recently displaced from third to fourth (at time of writing). “La noia” also placed second in the jury element of this year’s Eurojury.

All this suggests that we are on for another very good result for Italy. Angelina is very much in the frame as a potential winner, though if that were to happen it would be a more Duncan Laurence style win, where she neither won the jury nor the televote, but was high up in both. Whatever the outcome, this will I think could likely be the best result by a female solo artist for Italy since 1992 when Mia Martini finished fourth.

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Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest