Sanremo 2026, for the Accademia della Crusca this is the best text (which stands out at the “media festival”)

Sanremo 2026 becomes a terrain for linguistic as well as musical observation. Like every year, the Accademia della Crusca sifted through the texts of the thirty Big names in the competition, evaluating them without the filter of music. The result is a picture marked by mediocrity, made up above all of songs about tormented or finished loves: no sensational fall as happened last year, but not even verses capable of truly surprising.

According to the analysis also posted on the institution’s social networks, the Festival moves along a line of stylistic prudence, fully consistent with the style of the host and artistic director Carlo Conti. The lyrics do not seek a break, they do not force the language, they do not go to extremes either in a poetic or provocative sense.

The average rating is between 6 and 7, a sign of correct but rarely memorable writing. Ermal Meta, Fulminacci, Maria Antonietta and Colombre stand out with a good 7/8, while Dargen D’Amico, J-Ax, Levante, Luché, Nayt and Sayf win 7.

Love, fragility and repetition

The dominant theme remains sentimental. Out of thirty songs, over twenty tell of tormented loves, broken relationships, toxic bonds, fragilities hidden behind apparent security. Happy love is almost an exception. The second person – that undefined “you” typical of twentieth-century lyric poetry – continues to be the privileged recipient of the texts.

The couplet rhymes, the syntactic inversions such as “my arms” or “your lips”, a sometimes courtly lexicon mix with a more spoken language. Metaphors and translations persist, but they are often predictable. It is a writing that alternates ambition and simplicity, without finding a truly innovative balance.

Ermal Meta, the only look beyond the couple

In this panorama focused on intimacy, Ermal Meta emerges as the only artist capable of breaking out of the sentimental bubble. His song, a lullaby ideally addressed to a little girl from Gaza, introduces external reality into the Sanremo context. Without explicit proclamations, the text opens a window on what happens outside the Ariston, standing out for its intent and breadth.

Alongside him, Dargen D’Amico also tries to broaden the horizon, but it is Meta who represents the most evident case of a song that deals with the present.

Fedez and the para-poetry of introspection

The situation is different for Necessary evil by Fedez and Masini. The piece focuses on a language full of images and introspection, with references to psychoanalysis and abundant metaphors. It is what Coveri defines as para-poetry: an attempt to elevate oneself through evocative formulas, some successful, others more obvious such as “silence which is a noise”.

Overall, Sanremo 2026 appears like a normalized Festival, with fewer swear words than in the past, fewer Englishisms (but more Frenchisms, as in the case of Elettra Lamborghini) and a return to a more controlled Italian. Many signatures for each text – often seven or eight authors – testify to a collective and structured production. But the song destined to stay will probably be the one capable of uniting identity, coherence and a look at the world. This year, that trajectory seems to belong above all to Ermal Meta.

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