On 20th January the Eurovision winners and international superstars released their latest album ‘RUSH!’ but is this album any good or have they sold out?
With global sensations such as ‘Zitti E Buoni’, ‘I wanna be your slave’ and their cover of ‘Beggin’ going huge on TikTok, the Italian rock band have certainly earned a fair amount of fame in the year following their big win in Rotterdam at the 2021 Eurovision song contest. However, as a band created in Rome, the four native Italian artists have made the interesting decision to significantly reduce the amount of Italian used in their tracks.
With a whopping 17 tracks on ‘RUSH!’, Maneskin bring fun, spice, and heartbreak to the modern alternative rock scene. Featuring Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello on their single ‘Gossip’, and covering Elvis ‘If I Can Dream’ for the biopic, the band branch out with their collaborations moving over to the American side of rock.
My personal favourite tracks are the snappy, and unique songs, such as the sarcastic ‘BLA BLA BLA’, powerful ‘Own my Mind’, and the feisty ‘Gasoline’ which feel very true to Maneskin’s roots, drawing them in line with ‘For Your Love’ and ‘Vennt’ani.’
Many fans believe the band have ‘sold out’, and are pursuing a more American pop punk scene, straying away from their European background, in order to reach a wider audience, rather than staying true to their roots. In their first studio album ‘Il Ballo Della Vita’ over half the tracks are entirely in Italian, and on their second album ‘Teatro d’ira’ six of eight are in Italian.
Their third album however not only has an English title but, out of seventeen tracks, only three are in Italian, making fans question what is important to them? The new wave of European Rock and Roll, or the economics of appealing to the masses, looking at America following their widely successful 2022 ‘Loud Kids On Tour’ journey.
I have been following Maneskin’s career since they won Festival De Sanremo in 2021, deciding that they would represent Italy at Eurovision. If this album is to be experimental, testing their hand at more English songs, playing with dialect in ‘KOOL KIDS’, donning a strong Mick Jagger accent to emulate the Rock and Roll soul, and they return to a greater balance of Italian in their next album, then I would retract my statement.
I don’t think they have sold out. I don’t think the album is by any means a bad album. I just believe that Maneskin have fell victim to an American curse, turning them in to a cog in the machine that is Sony Records, as opposed to being that fresh breath of European air lingering in the black hole of TikTok, drawing more scrollers in.
However I believe it would be such a shame to loose that same band that brought us an orchestral, teary rendition of ‘Coraline’ last year live on Italian TV, the raw emotion of words I don’t understand, forcing me to scream and spit syllables of aggressive Italian.
