Maneskin: Meet the Eurovision 2021 favourites representing Italy

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It’s Eurovision day, with the 2021 grand final taking place tonight (Saturday 22 May) at a live event in Rottderdam.

One of the favourites to win this year’s competition is Måneskin, the Italian rock band who blew everyone away at rehearsals earlier this week with their song “Zitti e buoni”.

Formed in Rome, the band are hoping to impress judges with their charismatic performance, which will be broadcast live when the competition gets underway from 8pm UK time. We caught up with Måneskin ahead of the final – read our Q&A below:

Hi guys, how are you feeling about performing at the Eurovision final?

It’s very cool, we’re really excited to go on stage!

What’s it been like being in Rotterdam after everything that’s taken place in the last year?

The best part of the whole event is having the possibility of playing in front of 3,000 people, we were missing that a lot. The last time we played live was two years ago, in London! We’re used to playing arenas in Italy.

Who are your influences?

We take inspiration from all the huge bands through history, from Led Zeppelin to Arctic Monkeys, but also the newer stuff, like Idles, we love them, Slaves, Royal Blood…

Your rehearsals got a lot of attention – did that add any pressure?

No, it’s nice in a chill way, we’re just happy people like our performance and we’re focusing on doing our best in the final.

In 2019, Italy saw big success with Mahmood and “Soldi” – are you hoping to emulate that?

Ah, even better! He did really well and we hope to do the same on that stage.

What do you want to achieve with your performance?

I think for us, this year, we have the chance to show Italian music isn’t just classical or that kind of thing. Of course that’s part of our culture, but we can do many other things as well – we want to show people there is great rock music in Italy. It’s definitely time for a band to win!

What entries from other countries do you love this year?

We like Finland (another band) and we like Ukraine a lot, Russia and Lithuania!

What will your next step be if you win Eurovision 2021?

If we win, hopefully we’ll get attention from all these other countries across TV and radio. We’d have to travel a lot, and we want to play live again as soon as possible.

The Eurovision 2021 grand final takes place tonight (Saturday 22 May) – follow The Independent for live updates and coverage.