Tananai, “I’m hungry for the present”

This article is published in issue 14 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until April 5, 2023

Milan, one day in March, Tananai he is going to Palazzo Reale to the exhibition of Bill Viola, pioneer of video art. A boy stops him in Piazza Duomo, hands him the smartphone, but doesn’t ask for a selfie: “My mom’s on the phone, can you say hello?”. If someone had filmed the scene, it would have gone viral, like all the videos concerning him by now, since curtain with the incredulous taxi driver – «Is it really her?» – to the duet with the street singer.
Still Milan, a few days later, a few steps from the recording studio where he is starting to rehearse for the tour departing on April 28, with dates already sold out, Tananai stops to rewind the tape of the last few months. And it’s like telling from inside a wave. You use precise words, devoid of rhetoric. He speaks hidden in a beige sweatshirt with a hood on his head that covers his rigorously unkempt hair: «I already have some gray ones», he pushes the hood aside, smiles without malice.
Why there were stubborn apprehensions: Sanremo 2022 last in the standings; immediately after, the unexpected success and the change of life from day to night, “which was traumatic”; the summer in Fomo (fear of missing out)“that is, with the anxiety of missing an event or an apparition, in fact I was always out and about and very tired”.
Yet, it seems a tide away. And Tananai, born Alberto Cotta Ramusino, 28 years old in May, a different person. More mature, centered. The same as at the 2023 Festival it took fifth place with the sweetest ballad Tangothat everyone sings, even Gianni Morandi in the sun in the garden of the house and the video, of course, goes viral.

What put her back on track?
«Paradoxically a sprained ankle on stage at Beats Live last summer. As they wrapped it backstage I was pissed, kept insisting there was sand and I slipped. My manager arrives: “Alby, it’s not that. It’s just that you’re too excited and you’re not focused. If you carry on like this, today you get hurt and tomorrow you sing badly”.

Has the alarm sounded?
“I was the alarm. They called me here, they wanted me there. Dazzled by everything that was happening to me, I was forgetting about the important things: family, friends and the music itself that I had never left, even when I was an inconclusive dickhead. Yes, I felt lost.”

How did he find himself?
«Thanks to the awareness that my songs are no longer mine: they belong to the people; thanks to the closeness of the right people and a course of psychotherapy, which I started above all to give a name to certain destabilizing thoughts, which I still can’t define».

Is this also why the second time in Sanremo went better than the previous one?
«It went well because I knew who to sing my piece to: I imagined Olga and Maxim, husband and wife separated by the war in Ukraine, as well as the protagonists of the video Tango. In 2022, on the other hand, I didn’t know who to turn to. And then this year, before going on stage, I locked myself in the dressing room with the co-producer of the song Davide Simonetta and sang it to him a capella, looking him straight in the eye: Tango is a difficult song to perform like this. When he got excited, it was time to go out and replicate for everyone else ».

He said he was going to play in Kiev. And in Moscow for a million euros?
“Not now. When the conflict ends, yes: I have nothing against the Muscovites».

What is your position with respect to this war?
“It’s absurd, shameful. There is an invaded country and an invading country. There are also some Russian boys sent to slaughter like animals behind the lie of an exercise».

His friend Fedez argues that an artist must expose himself, take a stand precisely. For Salmo, on the other hand, that of committed artists is “a fairy tale that must end”. Who is right?
«I think the truth lies in the middle, that it is honest for an artist to expose himself if he wishes, and that it is equally honest not to do so when he does not feel like it or does not deem the context suitable».

Would you have felt comfortable concluding a performance by launching an unequivocal appeal to the premier: “Giorgia, legalize her”?
«No, although I believe it is right to legalize soft drugs. There are two reasons for my no: at the end of a performance I have an orgasm and I can’t say anything, even more so at that moment I can’t get out of my sphere of competence. This does not mean that Wittgenstein, the philosopher of language, is right. If I’m not mistaken, he maintained that what one cannot speak of, one must remain silent about. But a debate cannot arise in this way ».

Are you following the one about homoparenting and the government’s squeeze on rainbow family rights?
“A deprivation of rights will never find me in agreement.”

Do you want children?
“At least three.”

What kind of son has he been up to now?
“I never let my parents get bored, but I didn’t make them worry too much either.”

Boyish nonsense?
«One night I ended up at the police station: some carabinieri had caught me on the ring road tagging (in the jargon of writers, put your signature on the walls, ed)».

drugs?
«Cannette. But when my father found smoke on me he was much more angry than on other occasions: perhaps he feared that I was prone to addictions, instead I like having control of my mind ».

Does he let himself go on stage?
«It is the only moment, together with that of writing, in which I don’t fight against anything».

Yet he got there relatively late. His career began as an electronic music producer.
“I didn’t get the call, I didn’t feel the sacred fire. One day I was waiting for recorded voices for pieces and I got tired of waiting: I took a text I had written – I’ve always written notes, thoughts, poems, short stories –, I sang it and I was moved, I was just fine ».

The first solo public performance?
“In a shop advertising a festival I wasn’t even invited to. In front of me, about twenty people: friends and people passing by. I remember that I closed the performance like this: “Dunno, I don’t know what to say, see you at the Forum”. I have the video somewhere.”

Did you mean the Mediolanum Forum in Assago? Perhaps deep down she knew that it would arrive sooner or later, to be precise on May 8th.
«The fans are bombarding me with direct messages to put certain songs in the lineup. For sure, in addition to the album tracks Rave, EclipseI’ll sing something from the old Ep Small roars; I will alternate between dance songs and tearjerker ballads: hot and cold, cold and hot. I’m already savoring the moment I’m going to sing Tango And Abysmal live together with the public: it will certainly be the best of my life so far».

You’ve gone from light-hearted hero and loser of Casual Sex to prince of serenades. Aren’t you afraid that, outside the fence in which you have been pigeonholed, someone no longer recognizes you?
«Evolving for me is a duty, towards music and those who follow me. Why should people continue to listen to an artist who is not progressing?».

What if, ironically, they suddenly stop listening to her?
«I’d be sorry, I’d feel like shit, but I wouldn’t be crazy, not anymore. I’ve learned to follow the flow of events, without worrying about missing them, because one way or another, if they have to come back, they’ll come back. My hunger is present.’

Is there a love in this present?
“Yes, Sarah.”

How long have you been together?
“It’s been three years.”

In 2022 he declared: «I don’t believe in monogamy. I’m a good guy who does things that aren’t like a good guy.”
“Did I say that as a boyfriend?”

Well, exactly, wasn’t Sara angry?
“For sure”.

Correction?
“Correction: I don’t think that the only way to love is monogamy, even that of polygamists can be true love, but I’m not”.

Also in 2022 he declared again: «I am heterosexual. But it can also happen that one morning you wake up and suddenly think: ah, I really want to go free climbing!».
“I know what I am now, but I don’t know myself for what I can be. At the same time I know that if one day I met a boy and tried new feelings, I don’t think I would be frightened, because my parents raised me without labels or limits to love and taught respect for all”.

The company is still far from this result.
“Maybe in a couple of generations. Meanwhile, something is moving: I am thinking of the wave of feminism and the awareness of gender identity”.

However, the reactions to a kiss like the one between her and Fedez on the Fabrique stage in May 2022 are enough to bring us back.
“It was a show of pure affection. He was overjoyed, his cancer was behind him, he hadn’t performed live in a while, and we were having a great time, emotions took over. It would have been a problem if he had punched me or told me to fuck off, like people did when I sang in their faces in the barracks where I started.’

What is the most romantic gesture you have dedicated to Sara?
«Saturnalia it’s the first song I wrote for her: I was clever, I inserted the dates of our two anniversaries in the text, so I don’t forget them!».

Two?
“One is from the day we met, the second is from the day we got together, like six months later, we took it slow. Once, to celebrate it, I recovered a small table with some Ikea chairs, I placed it on the sidewalk in front of the place where we met for the first time, Macao in viale Molise, I set the table and served lunch. Then I called Sara and told her to join me: too bad she wasn’t in Milan ».

Cohabitation: yes, no, maybe?
“Not immediately, it’s an acceleration that would not bring respect to the relationship”.

Does he talk like that because he’s already tried it?
“I was very young when I lived together for a year and a half: it was more of a formative experience than a beautiful one”.

Did first love come early too?
«Holidays 2006, Lake Garda, soundtrack Summer of the Negramaros: at the residence where we went there was Sofia, a very nice guest of friends. The first thing that strikes me about a girl is the ability to make me laugh.”

Sounds a bit paraculo, eh!
“That’s right! Either way, I fell head over heels in love. One evening, to declare myself, I recorded a note on her mobile phone and set it for her instead of the alarm clock ringtone: “I like you, I want to be with you”. I never saw her again, she left the next day. We have never met over the years. Last summer, carrambata: in Bergamo, just when I sang Summer with Giuliano Sangiorgi, she showed up in the backstage at the end of the concert. I didn’t recognize her right away, then we talked about her and finally I told her that in her time I was crazy about her and that I had tried ».

Tananai is sexy, a truth universally recognized, especially by mothers.
“I really like it: mothers have seen a lot, they know what true love is”.

And now they also know that he goes to visit children suffering from leukemia at the Maria Letizia Verga center in Monza.
«I wrote down their wishes and next time I can present myself with personalized gifts. Then, with Achille Lauro, who has already been there on several occasions, we want to organize a concert on the terrace».

Is charity done and not said or is it done and said?
«Look, the important thing is to do it. Whether one wants to take home a triumph of image or not, these cocks: I’m of the idea of ​​live and let live».

Photo: Davide Musto
Service: Nick Cerioni
VF fashion stylist: Martina Antinori
Collaborators: Davide Spinella, Noemi Managò and Ilaria Taccini
Grooming: Kilian [email protected]

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