Back in 2021, Italian rock band Måneskin won the Eurovision Song Contest with their song ‘Zitti e Buoni’, which garnered them a huge following worldwide. Frontman of the band, Damiano David, stated upon their win how “rock and roll never dies”, and while the singer surely still loves the rock sound, he has decided to also work in other music genres. In 2024, David started his solo career with the release of ‘Silverlines’, and less than a year later, he released his debut album FUNNY little FEARS. The singer went on tour in support of this album, making a stop at Amsterdam’s AFAS Live on September 15th.
Doors to the venue opened at 18:30, and David’s fans slowly but steadily trickled in during the two hours until he would actually make it onto the stage. The intro started right on time, music playing over the speakers while the Hollywood-like letters hanging from the ceiling spelling out the singer’s name lit up. Mere seconds later, David’s seven-person band walked onto the stage. After the drummer had taken his seat behind the drums, the skin of which was doodled on in the style of the album cover, Damiano David himself took to the stage. David, wearing a shiny silver tank top, opened with ‘Born with a Broken Heart’ and continued with his hit ‘The First Time’. David recently released a deluxe version of his album entitled FUNNY little DREAMS, and the singer played almost all of the nineteen songs live. He moved on to ‘Mysterious Girl’ and ‘Voices’, wishing two fans in the audience a quick happy birthday in between.
David spoke about the deluxe version of his album and stated that the next song “is pretty fun, so I wanna see you jump” before diving right into the first notes of ‘Cinnamon’. Probably the song with the most rock sound of the entire album, it definitely got the crowd hyped up, especially as David took off his tank top near the end. Afterwards, David talked to the audience about how he’d spend his day in Amsterdam, trying some traditional Dutch food, including a lovely pickled herring. Moving on, David explained how he loves doing covers and decided to perform a different one at each show. The “madly underrated” band whose song he decided to sing tonight actually played at AFAS themselves years ago – David meant none other than Kings of Leon, performing their hit ‘Sex on Fire’. This was not the only cover David played this evening. After performing ‘Talk to Me’, a collaboration with Tyla and Nile Rodgers which David is “super proud” of, he covered Miley Cyrus’ ‘Nothing Breaks Like a Heart’. A clothing rack was then rolled onto the stage, several jackets hanging from it so that David could pick which one to wear. Meanwhile, he wanted to “take a moment to talk about something slightly more serious”, namely the fact that while his life had seemed perfect from an outsider’s point of view, he himself felt quite sad. He wrote ‘Perfect Life’ about this feeling of “being stuck in someone else’s idea of perfection”, which he performed to the backdrop of everybody’s phone lights up in the air.
Turning the vibe back up, David continued with ‘Next Summer’, which the entire audience was able to sing along to, even taking over effortlessly from the singer when he needed to have a drink. At this point, David was about halfway through the show and took a moment to shout out his new girlfriend, who “brought back light and everything beautiful”. He felt like she had healed him, about which he wrote ‘Sick of Myself’, singing the entire song sitting down. He continued with ‘The Bruise’ and ‘Tangerine’ before leaving the stage as his band continued with an instrumental interlude. A few minutes later, David came back in a new, fully white outfit to perform ‘Zombie Lady’. While the studio version includes his girlfriend Dove Cameron’s vocals, her parts were sung by David’s backing vocalist, Tatiana Tarsia. David continued with ‘Tango’, ‘Angel’, and ‘Over’. In between, David asked the audience to make some noise for his band, especially singers Tarsia Re and George Lovett. Before going off stage for the encore, David performed a very important song to him, ‘Mars’, which he wrote about the idea of the world being so messed up that everybody has to move to another planet. One of the lyrics in this song goes “Rock and roll has died again”, after which David said “my fault!”, making the audience laugh – the singer has received quite some criticism on his album being pop rather than rock, especially after his comment at the Eurovision song contest that rock and roll never dies.
After a short break, David and his band came back on stage to perform ‘The First Time’ again. An interesting choice, as he did not play ‘Silverlines’ at all. He ended his show with ‘Naked’, the last song of the deluxe version of his album, which David also wanted to close off with for the very reason that it’s very important to him. “I wanna try as many versions of myself as possible,” David stated before mentioning the importance of giving yourself the freedom to experiment and to be whoever you want to be. Flashlights went up into the air as he was singing. At the end of the song, he mashed it up with the final chorus of ‘Solitude (No One Understands Me)’. Jumping down towards the front row as the final notes of the night sounded, he gave as many fans as possible his love before he had to leave.
