Damiano David: “I had to break down many layers… This album is me, 100 per cent”

Damiano David is sitting on his living room sofa at his home in Los Angeles, the city he moved to in January 2024. His surroundings seem in keeping with those of someone who’s enjoyed significant success in the world of music: there are floor-to-ceiling windows behind him and to his right, revealing an unusually white LA sky that matches the clean walls of his apartment. In stark contrast, there’s a black piano behind him, and a black cat on his lap, who remains there for the first five minutes of our interview. Though the cat actually belongs to his girlfriend, Dove Cameron, it stares lovingly at the 26-year-old singer as he scratches its head. Then, out of nowhere, it jumps off and away as he talks about the narrative thread of his debut solo album, FUNNY little FEARS. Or, to be more accurate, the lack of it.

“When I write songs, I truly have no idea what I’m talking about,” Damiano begins with a wide smile and chuckle, his Italian accent mild and bearing hints of American. “It’s truly gut feelings and sentences that make sense in my brain in that moment.”

It’s at this point the cat jumps off his lap.

“But when I look back at the record,” he continues unperturbed, “I understand that it’s actually the narration of me coming back to life. It’s truly me telling my story of how I got from a very unhappy place to a way happier place.”

Damiano’s willingness to admit that he was so despondent proves the old adage that money and fame can’t buy happiness. Because if you use those metrics, he should have been on top of the world. Måneskin, the band he fronted – and, it should be noted, still fronts – had had a dizzying few years of success. After winning the Eurovision Song Contest in May 2021, their profile soared. Both their second album, Teatro d’ira: Vol. I, which had been released a couple of months before, and their 2018 debut, Il ballo della vita, have since gone five times platinum in their native Italy, and 2023’s Rush! went double platinum. The band were playing huge festival stages, and that year headlined London’s 20,000-capacity The O2. But none of that mattered to Damiano. He was suffering. Badly. So he had to step away from who he’d become – and from the band – in order to find himself again, to heal, to get better. He had to write his way through his pain on his own, without the band in tow.

“It was quite bad,” he says, his hand gripping the side of his neck as if to support it. He elongates those last two words to indicate the understatement, and then laughs a laugh that seems designed to both mask and emphasise the extent of his struggles. “I'm not going to go into details, but it was quite bad. And this album is something I couldn’t have done with the band, because it’s so much about me. Meaning that it would have been easier if it was their fault and I could have fixed it with them. But it was not, and it is not. It was my fault and it was my perspective and it was my own unsatisfaction, so it was something that I necessarily had to do alone. With the band, we have an identity and I have to respect that, so that of course denies me from putting 100 per cent my point of view in something because it always has to be the band’s point of view. And I needed the chance to get to know myself more and explore things from my own point of view – to the level that I had to go to another country, because I think even having my friends and family around would have influenced how I perceived some things and how I processed it.”

Thankfully, the move to LA – initially to make the record, but now a longer-term change – had significantly positive effects on Damiano and his life. The most important one was meeting Dove and falling in love. You can see when he talks about her how happy he is. The relationship started when he was already midway through making FUNNY little FEARS, and while it’s not completely linear in terms of narrative, it’s impossible to not notice the switch in mood as the album progresses. Much more poppy and theatrical than Måneskin’s music, the record begins with Damiano in that “quite bad” place. There’s a lot of heartbreak and self-recrimination on these songs, but there’s also a steadfast refusal to give in to the darkness. Instead, FUNNY little FEARS confronts it directly and charges through it, whether on the more rambunctious, poppier tunes like Voices or Born With A Broken Heart, or the more stripped-down, vulnerable moments like Next Summer or the tender, poignant closer Solitude (No One Understands Me). And despite baring his heart and soul so much on its 14 songs, he says he didn’t feel the pressure of being vulnerable, nor of having his own name – rather than the band’s – attached to this project.

“It's almost a tool that I needed in order to talk about these things,” he says, a freshly-rolled cigarette – or perhaps joint – now in his right hand, “and in order to give them the right care and the right light to shine and to be understood by people, I had to break down as many layers, as many filters, as possible to really express what I'm saying, and how much involved I am. Everything is personal – this album is me, 100 per cent. It’s my life.”

Or, at least, it was him and it was his life when he was writing and making it. Nowadays, he’s in a much better place – settled in his new city, madly in love and with a world tour on the horizon. So does he still recognise himself in these songs?

“I don’t only recognise myself,” he answers, “but I feel what I felt for four minutes of a song. And that’s why I always try to make it very clear when the song is over, when the performance is over. Even when video of Born With A Broken Heart ends, I’m back in normal clothes and I jump in a car and get away. It’s like taking a picture of water flowing. In the picture is that water in that moment and I can describe it, but if you look at the same river, the water has gone and it’s a completely different group of particles. So it’s very important to say that this is an experience that I took, I shaped it, I made a song about it, and that’s worth celebrating for the duration of the song. But when the song is over, it comes back to being a personal thing which deserves care and respect. It’s not meant to constantly be under the spotlight. Because the other times, I’m just a guy at home with his own experiences – and I really want it to stay like that.”

So is he going to take what he’s learned about himself and about music, about those frozen moments in time and the ones that keep flowing beyond it, from this record and utilise that knowledge when – and it is a when, not an if – Måneskin eventually regroup? And will he be a different person when that happens?

“Yeah,” he nods. “But I would have been anyway. We’re still all in our 20s, so it’s hard to imagine a future where we’re not different.”

He chuckles quietly. Behind him, the white skies feel like they’re hiding the future, but also like they’re leaving it wide open. It’s a new dawn, a new day, a new life – and Damiano David is feeling good.

FUNNY little FEARS is due out on May 16 via Sony Music Italy / Arista. Catch Damiano live on his solo world tour this year – get your tickets now.

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