Damiano David
“I thought we had something good in our hands,” Damiano David sings on his new single, “Next Summer.” But what fans actually have is something good in our ears.
The song — the third single from the Måneskin frontman’s upcoming debut solo project — arrived on Thursday (Feb. 27) and finds the Italian musician continuing on his pop journey, this time with a notable ache and jealousy in his voice.
“Call me when he breaks your heart next summer/ Baby, I’ll be waiting here/ Call me when you’re all f–ked up, my lover, and I’ll be there to lick your tears/ You had to throw away our love to find out nothing’s as good as us/ So call me when he breaks your heart next summer,” he sings, full of longing on the tender chorus.
While the song may seem like it’s about a spurned lover bitter about the end of his relationship and eager to rekindle the snuffed flame, David says there’s much more to it.
“I put down in words a moment I lived during the summer,” he tells Billboard of the track that he wrote while he was in Los Angeles last fall. “I guess it was a way, as I always do with my music, to cope with my experiences in life and feelings.”
“The lyrics are very simple, quite childish. So I’ve asked myself why I ended up with this kind of lyrics, and I guess it’s because what I tried to do was tell a more intense and complicated feeling in the easiest way possible,” he explains. “It’s about not dealing with yourself and being stuck in your own limits without really understanding why things happen. It’s about not being able to face our mistakes, and instead, in a cowardly way, wishing that your mistakes could be someone else’s.”
Ahead of “Next Summer,” the musician released a cover of Miley Cyrus and Mark Ronson’s “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart” as a Spotify Single for Valentine’s Day. From his own upcoming project, he dropped the peppy “Born With a Broken Heart” in October as his second solo single, and “Silverlines” in September for his debut song.
Speaking to Billboard at the time about going his own way musically and introducing listeners to the solo Damiano David via “Silverlines,” he shared of the vulnerable and melancholic track, “It’s basically describing my whole journey.” He added, “The goal of this song is not topping the charts. I’m introducing myself to the world … But I’m just very glad I have the opportunity to do this, and the results will come.”
What’s also coming for the singer is a 33-date world tour, with multiple shows already sold out. That includes the tour-opening performance Sept. 11 in Warsaw, followed by dates in Berlin, Paris, London and Rome before the trek heads to Australia, Japan and South America, and finally landing stateside in Seattle Nov. 21. The tour is slated to end Dec. 16 in Washington, D.C.
Stream Damiano David’s “Next Summer” below:
Damiano David feels sorrow no more. The Måneskin frontman has embarked on his first solo project, releasing the song “Silverlines” — produced by Labrinth — on Thursday (Sept. 26).
“This song is a very special story to me,” the Italian artist tells Billboard of the emotional track that begins as a raw, stripped-back melancholy tune that fills with hope as it crescendos. “Sometimes, you hear a song and you think, ‘Oh my god, this song talks about me.’ … It was so amazing for me to get to work with such a huge artist and also on a song that, it’s basically describing my whole journey.”
According to David, singer-songwriter Sarah Hudson was already working on the tune with Labrinth when she came up with the idea to connect the two men and have the Måneskin rocker hop on the track, for which he helped pen the lyrics. And given the opportunity to collaborate with Labrinth — who has worked with the likes of Billie Eilish, The Weeknd, Nicki Minaj and more — he wasn’t about to say no. “If you have the chance to work with Labrinth, you don’t get precious! You just do it!” David laughs, praising his “extremely meticulous” producer and their “very easy” collaboration process. And he’s more than delighted with how “Silverlines” has turned out.
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“It was funny for me how [this] first song was actually, it was, like, all I hoped for,” he marvels of “Silverlines,” which finds him showing a vulnerable side that he had yet to share in his music with Måneskin. “It was like the lyrics are such a message of hope for me because it was exactly what I was aiming for with this record, and now that the record is finished, I look back to that song and it’s like, ‘Wow! That’s basically the last stop of my journey,’ and it’s so funny that it came at the beginning — like [it was] heaven sent.”
“There’s a level of vulnerability that I never reached and a level of honesty that I never managed to reach not because I was not being honest in the other songs,” he adds. “I had to dig deeper into myself in order to even get to this information and then be able to transform it into music.”
David explains that part of the reason he had not yet shared this more personal side of him in Måneskin was because he wanted to respect the band’s strong identity — which he credits as part of its success — and also the “role that was assigned to him,” but it wasn’t showing him as a whole person. “At one point I started to really suffer this very partial point of view of myself that I myself was giving to the world … I knew that I was the one choosing only to express that,” he shares, emphasizing that he takes responsibility for that, and is now, with his solo work, revealing a fuller picture of who Damiano David is. “Literally my brain and my body rebelled to me and forced me to actually kind of cut me open, cut myself open and show myself to the world.”
And that honesty is right there in his favorite lyrics from “Silverlines”: A smile/ I welcome you/ A darkness/ I’ve long forgotten you/ And peace belongs to me. “That’s what happened. This is the part that I share with the audience — it’s the public part of the work I’ve done,” explains David, who moved to Los Angeles in January, where he spent a few months by himself to figure out his priorities. “I of course did a lot of personal work and personal growing, and I cut some things out of my life and I replaced [them] with new, healthier, more beautiful ones. I think now things are better.”
Helping him pull back the curtain is the accompanying music video for “Silverlines,” a theatrical visual directed by Nono + Rodrigo that shows first the struggle, then the endless possibilities that await David. “One of the main topics of the whole thing is like, more than having the world,” he shares. “For me, it’s more like, from now on, it’s a white sheet and I’m able to actually … make my visuals become reality.”
And now that he’s sharing a closer look at himself with his solo music, the vocalist is excited to see what’s on the horizon, though nabbing a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 for “Silverlines” may not be at the top of his list. “I don’t want to be like a hypocrite and say I don’t care about the charts because of course I care! Everybody cares!” he admits. “But at the same time, the goal of this song is not topping the charts. I’m introducing myself to the world, so I don’t expect to be first from the first day. Actually, I don’t expect to be first any time. But I’m just very glad I have the opportunity to do this, and the results will come.”
Check out Damiano David’s debut solo song, “Silverlines,” and its video below:
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