“I think what FUNNY little FEARS is doing for me is really letting go of that, because I’m really not concerned of how much success this record is going to get—it’s really for me to be satisfied, and to look back at what I did and to be proud of it and not have any regret or any leftover thing that I wanted to say.”
If you created a rock and roll star in a lab, the creature that emerged would likely resemble Damiano David. Picture it: dark, smart, soulful. Tattoos gliding across muscles, voice raspy and romantic, hair sculpted to perfection. Physicality and demeanor aside, the rock star in the public imaginary is still incomparable to the real deal. Damiano David, with brains and uncompromising morality, emerges from Rome under the Los Angeles sun and seems to ask: Are you not entertained?
Originally one part of the four piece band Måneskin, which took the world by storm most notably after winning the Eurovision Song Contest 2021 with hard-hitting anthem “Zitti e Buoni,” David is now gearing up for his first ever solo world tour for his debut solo album, FUNNY little FEARS. He’ll play five different continents on the tour, as well as appear on the festival circuit at Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo—many of these milestones he’s passed with Måneskin, but never solo.
As we speak about David’s adjustment period in the creative process, he eyes the palm trees dotting the LA skyline. He ponders, “With the band, it was always about throwing stuff in, and we tried to meet each other in a mid-way point. Whereas being solo, it is more about me digging into everything I have in my bag and seeing what I am more pulled to.” David continues, “I didn’t know what my solo style was going to be, but I knew that I had a couple of music genres that felt comfortable doing…I knew what my engine was, but I didn’t know where I was going to go, so I figured I was just going to try a bunch of things and see what I liked the most.”
David reveals that going solo has been both exciting and scary—it’s fresh territory for him. He has been playing and performing with Måneskin since they were teenagers in Rome, so the shift in his path sets a particularly strong precedent for his venture into an unknown realm.
“My bandmates are my friends and the only way I knew music so far,” he admits, “and they were also kind of my safety net, because every responsibility is shared, and you win or you lose together. Being solo is really a shot in the dark for me, not because I had crazy goals or ambitions for this record, but even just starting a process like this is very scary in the beginning, like I second-guessed myself on a lot of things. I found out that, like everything in life, the scarier part is the beginning, and then your body is going to tell you if that’s right or not, and after two days of sessions I already had basically three of the songs that are in the record now, so I had a pretty early signal that I was doing the right thing.”
Continue reading “FLAUNT: Damiano David – Let’s see what sticks and let go of the rest”
