The title that hides a doubt
There is a phrase that remains imprinted after the first listen:
Because if I’m not dead yet, it will be by chance, it will be by mistake. Or maybe it’s because I’m great.
There is no pride, there is no exaltation. There is amazement.
The paradox is all in the title: “I’m great” sounds like a declaration of strength, but it’s exactly the opposite. It’s the phrase you tell yourself in the mirror when you need to convince yourself, when life has taken away all your certainties and you cling to the only possibility left: that perhaps, in some inexplicable way, you did something right.
Tiziano explains it bluntly: this song talks about insecurities. Of that moment when you look back and ask yourself if you got here by merit, by chance or by pure survival instinct. It is the verse of those who have stopped looking for certain answers and have begun to accept doubt as a form of truth.
The song, written together with Roberto Casalino and Simone Cremonini and produced by Zef and Marco Sonzini, opens the new album of the Latina singer-songwriter. It is the first work after the separation from her husband Victor Allen in March 2024, after a change of label (from Universal to Sugar Music, where “they let the contract expire, like milk”) and after a long period of silence. It is not a restart from scratch, but a return to himself.
Swallowing concrete: the metaphor of the toxic relationship
The song opens with a burning image:
We swallowed concrete before sleeping.
It’s not a poetic metaphor, it’s the physical sensation of someone who lives in a toxic relationship, of someone who holds everything back until they feel petrified inside.
That cement is the unspoken words “in fear of being alone”, the paralyzing fear that keeps your hands glued even when you know you should let go. It is a harsh, visual metaphor that tells how much it weighs to stay in something that is dying only because the alternative – loneliness – is even more scary.
And then that bitter sweetness:
We discarded memories like candy, like those gifts that you already know what’s there, but you always find a reason to surprise yourself again, which now hurt us.
It is memory treated as a vice, a need. You know it will hurt, but you can’t stop. It is the precise photograph of regret, but also of acceptance. Not everything gets a second chance. And not everything has to have it.
From divorce to rebirth: the life of Tiziano Ferro today
In recent years Tiziano Ferro has gone through storms that many would have chosen to hide. She spoke publicly about bulimia, anorexia, depression, obesity and alcoholism, breaking the taboo of a still stigmatized male vulnerability. He recounted the panic attacks without filters:
There is a lot of hypocrisy. It’s fashionable to say ‘mental health’ but I never hear of serotonin, of drugs with the appropriate nomenclature, of courses with psychoanalysis and psychiatrists.
Today she lives in Los Angeles with her two children, Margherita and Andres, of whom she has sole custody. “I didn’t choose America. It came for love. Then the children arrived. And when the relationship ended, leaving America became complex. I could take them away, but I don’t. For now I think it’s right like this”, he says with that clarity that runs through the entire album.
New management with Paola Zukar, new young and sharp producers (Marz, Zef, Bias), new rules of the game.
He no longer seeks perfection, but sincerity.
I chose the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. There are no two versions of me. There is one. Maybe it sucks. But it’s really one. And it’s a wonder to live like this.
When the horizon promises land but brings war
The second verse is a stab, it is the bitter discovery that what you thought was salvation was actually another battlefield.
Laughter will bury us, you make fun of me, I make fun of you. And then sorry if we didn’t survive, but it felt like love.
It is the most cynical and at the same time the most human verse: when there is nothing else left, we make fun of each other, we survive with irony because admitting failure hurts too much.
Ferro does not idealize the past: he looks at it straight on, with all the fatigue and tenderness that remain after a finished story. It felt like love. And maybe it really was, but not in the right way, not at the right time. Some stories end not for lack of love, but because love alone is not enough.
What love really is according to Tiziano Ferro
In the chorus comes the most mature definition, the one that undermines the very concept of toxic love:
Love is not possession, it is not prison, it is not silence.
They are verses that come after years of therapy, after having understood firsthand what it means to love in the wrong way. It’s not a lesson, it’s an awareness gained through pain. The voice is no longer that of the boy from the first albums, but that of a man who has learned to live with his own fragility.
Love does not serve to fill a void, but to recognize that, even with that void, one can live. In his tone you can hear the tiredness, but also the peace of someone who no longer needs to pretend.
And so “I am great” becomes a small manifesto: greatness is not in appearing, but in surviving with dignity. You are great not because you won, but because you are still here. Not because you have all the answers, but because you have the courage to live without them.
The return to the stadiums: Stadi26 and the 300 thousand tickets sold out
In 2026 Tiziano Ferro will return to the stadiums with the Stadi26 tour. The announcement sparked the enthusiasm of the fans: 300 thousand tickets were pulverized, so much so that the events at the San Siro Stadium in Milan (6 and 7 June) and at the Olympic Stadium in Rome (27 and 28 June) doubled.
A return that smells of liberation: after years of silence and fear, music returns to being his purest way of staying alive.
The full text of “I’m great”
We swallowed concrete before sleeping
And in fear of being alone we didn’t say a word
We discarded memories like candy
Like those gifts that you already know what’s there
But you always find a reason to surprise yourself again
Which now hurt us
How many times have we told ourselves to start over?
How many times have we cried for fear of making mistakes?
But they keep our hands glued
That errors are bullshit
And life is ours, eh
We didn’t know that
It was the last holiday in the sun
The last time we made love
What you told me everything will be fine
But what love, what good?
Let’s throw stones at all lies
Let’s sing the forgotten songs
There isn’t one in particular
Just take us back right where
We didn’t feel that emptiness inside
Because if I’m not dead yet
It will be by chance, it will be by mistake
Or maybe it’s because I’m great
And I never noticed
Laughter will bury us
You make fun of me, I make fun of you
And then sorry if we didn’t survive, but it felt like love
On the horizon it looked like land to me
And instead it was just war
We didn’t know that
It was the last holiday in the sun
The last time we made love
What you told me everything will be fine
But what love, what good?
Let’s throw stones at all lies
Let’s sing the forgotten songs
There isn’t one in particular
Just take us back right where
We didn’t feel that emptiness inside
Because love is not possession
It’s not prison, it’s not silence
Because if I’m not dead yet
It will be by chance, it will be by mistake
Or maybe it’s because I’m great
And I never noticed
Listen to it here
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