The Eurovision Song Contest 2022 will run May 10-14, but for Italy, competition season has already begun. The country’s annual Sanremo Music Festival previewed 25 eligible songs, ultimately narrowing down to a winner of its Big Artists section, which will go on to compete in the continental contest in May. Following the Sanremo finale Feb. 5, seven songs that competed crack the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart.
The winner of this year’s Sanremo Festival is “Brividi” by Mahmood and BLANCO and, accordingly, it outsold and out-streamed all its fellow competitors in the week ending Feb. 10. After debuting a week earlier, “Brividi” shoots from No. 67 to No. 7 on the Feb. 19-dated Global Excl. U.S. chart and 141-15 on the Billboard Global 200 with 36.8 million streams and 7,800 downloads sold worldwide, according to MRC Data.
Two other Sanremo finalists appear on both global charts. Irama’s “Ovunque Sarai” (fourth place in Sanremo) debuts at Nos. 56 and 118 on the Global Excl. U.S. survey and Global 200, respectively, while La Rappresentante Di Lista’s “Ciao Ciao” (seventh) enters at Nos. 77 and 158.
Four more songs from the competition hit the Global Excl. U.S. chart. Elisa debuts at No. 103 with “O Forse Sei Tu” (second-place finish), followed by Sangiovanni at No. 112 with “Farfalle” (fifth). Dargen D’Amico’s “Drove Si Balla” (ninth) hits No. 126 and Rkomi arrives at No. 149 with “Insuperabile” (17th).
This year’s haul of seven Sanremo entries surpasses the four that appeared on the Global Excl. U.S. chart following the 2021 festival.
And while “Brividi” cracks the Global Excl. U.S. top 10, last year’s winner, Måneskin’s “Zitti E Buoni,” reached a far more modest No. 106 directly following Sanremo, although it soared to No. 10 after winning Eurovision.
All seven of this year’s charting Sanremo finalist songs are performed by Italian artists and sung entirely in Italian. They averaged 99.8% of their sales and 99.7% of their streams from outside the U.S. in the tracking week. This overwhelming non-U.S. split is almost identical to the performance of the festival’s four chart entries in 2021.
Following last year’s Eurovision battle, the associated charting entries bumped their U.S. activity from less than half of a percentage point to 2% of global streams and 5% of sales, helped by the worldwide exposure for the competition.
