Q&A: Damiano David Opens Up On Stunning Solo Debut

Forbes

a day ago

SANREMO, ITALY - FEBRUARY 12: Damiano David attends the 75th Sanremo Music Festival 2025 at Teatro ... More Ariston on February 12, 2025 in Sanremo, Italy. (Photo by Daniele Venturelli/)
If you only know Damiano David as the lead singer of Italian glam rock band Maneskin, then you don't know David. On his solo debut, Funny Little Fears, David showcases a whole other side of himself.
Theatrical, vulnerable, eclectic and compelling, Funny Little Fears is an impressive introduction to the singer/songwriter side of David.
I spoke with him in a revealing conversation about being an introvert, why the initial success of Maneskin caught him by surprise, songwriting and much more.
Steve Baltin: Congratulations on the record. I was just looking at your Instagram. I've talked about this with so many artists. When you do a solo record as opposed to being in a band, it does feel like because it's under your name, it's much more personal. It feels like this one was more internal. Was that the case?
Damiano David: Yeah, I think, especially the last record with my band Maneskin, it's a lot about what I was seeing externally while this record is a lot about the effects that all that I've seen had on me.
Baltin: I'm always a big believer in writing being subconscious. So, when you started doing this and started putting all this into song, were there things that you were surprised about on the record?
David: Yeah, it was actually quite accurate. It's really my experience. I feel like everything that happened with the band happened so fast that I never really had the chance to absorb it and understand the effects that it was having on me. I was so moved by this boost of energy and enthusiasm that all the problems were going into the back of my brain. But you can delay stuff for only for as long as possible, at one point it's going to come out. And this was the time for me.
Baltin: Were there specific songs that really surprised you when you went back and listened to the lyrics?
David: I think that pretty much with every song, what happens to me it's like after I wrote it I read back the lyrics, and I realize that I didn't even know that I was feeling that so strongly or that like that was the source of my problem. This is really generalized to pretty much every song I write. In general, in the record I was surprised by the level of honesty and vulnerability and disconnects, also with the level of connection that I managed to have with all the producers and songwriters I worked with. It was surprising for me as a very internal person. I don't share much. So, it was surprising for me the level of understanding and the level of confidence that I can see in the songs.
Baltin: That's interesting. I've talked to so many people about this; music becomes your way of communicating. So, did you have to share this to express your feelings?
David: Yeah, definitely. The word that I was searching for was introverted. But yeah, for me, it's like opening the lid of a bottle and letting everything come out, because I'm not a great talker. So, music, that's the trick for me.
Baltin: That's so interesting to me because Chris Cornell was a friend and Chris was one of the greatest frontmen ever. He told me he was an outcast as a kid and became a musician because music becomes his way of communicating and fitting it with the world.
David: I think especially for songwriters, but I think it applies to musicians in general, many times it starts as a way to be seen or understood. I feel like a very common sentiment is wanting to say something or to show something and maybe not having the platform or not having the confidence or coming from an environment that doesn't really let you do it. So, music works as this kind of counterattack, where you're like, 'I'll put myself on a stage. So, you have to listen to me.' Then when you grow older and you're not that mad and instinctive anymore, you understand that it's actually your way to communicate strong feelings that can be overwhelming most of the time. When you have the safety of a stage, which seems counterintuitive, but a stage makes me feel makes me and I think a lot of colleagues feel safer. You have the strength to talk about these things.
Baltin: Because you consider yourself an introvert, when Maneskin started to become this huge behemoth that everybody responded to was there a feeling of disconnect, like this didn't make sense?
David: If you think about it, it feels weird because if you break it down, it's always weird to think there's that amount of people giving attention to you. I think it will never get normal for me. But I think that for me it felt a lot like I was right, like, I had something to say, and I thought it was worth listening to. This was finally the evidence that I was right.
Baltin: That then gives you the confidence to do a solo record that is more vulnerable because all these people are responding, all these people love it. The other thing of course that happens is you just get older. And as you get older, you just get more confident, you start to care less about what others think.
David: Yeah, I would say it's definitely true. I think it happened during the process of the record, I felt like I needed to communicate something and the only way possible to do it was to make a solo project. Then of course after that all the fears and self -doubting and the thinking about what people would think came about but I would say it lasted very few days because I was really paying attention to how writing this music made me feel. It was extremely positive for me.
Baltin: What was the first song written for this record?
David: I started with the purpose of doing a solo project. I knew that a very defining song was 'Born With A Broken Heart' because it's the type of sound that I didn't imagine for myself at the beginning of the process. Then it ended up being the one I feel more comfortable with right now and most represented by. That was really like a breaking point for me. It was like, 'Okay, I think we just found the sound of the record.'
Baltin: What was it about this sound that spoke to you?
David: I felt like it would allow me to be many different things at the same time, which is what I feel like I am and what I want to show the people. I feel like before I'm a songwriter, an artist, a performer or whatever, I'm a person. I'm a human being and people are made of many different layers and many different levels of emotions and experiences. I felt like this type of sound, which is very influenced by theater and musicals, would really give me the chance to explore a huge amount of emotions and dynamics and would allow me to dance if I wanted to dance and be very serious if I wanted to be serious, be very cinematic. I feel like it has such a wide range of emotions, and my main goal is to have fun with music. I felt like this would allow me to really have fun.