There are moments when Sanremo stops being a race and becomes something else. It happened now on the second evening, when Achille Lauro went on stage at the Ariston together with a 20-piece choir and sang “Perdutamente” — not as a repertoire performance, but as an act of collective memory.
Carlo Conti had anticipated it in the press conference: the choice of the song was agreed upon and is directly linked to the Crans-Montana tragedy. “Perdutamente” was sung by Achille Barosi’s mother and friends during his funeral. That spontaneous gesture of pain gave the song a meaning that goes far beyond the original text, transforming it into a point of reference for those who are processing grief that is impossible to explain.
Lyrics and meaning of “Perdutamente”
In the most literal sense, “Perdutamente” tells of total emotional abandonment: daily images that mix with fragility, forgiveness, complicated relationships. Romance and disenchantment come together in a song that talks about that feeling of “stupid life” when everything seems too human and too complicated. We get lost, we get back up, we continue to search for meaning.
This is precisely why the song worked as a tribute: it is not a heroic song, it does not celebrate. Accompany. And on the Ariston stage, in its simplicity, he did what music does best — he gave shape to something that ordinary words cannot contain.
The audience stopped. And for a few minutes, the Festival reminded us that outside the bubble of sequins and rankings, there is a world that bears the weight of real losses.
