When I point out to him that in the latest version of XXVerse added the invective “and fuck the fascis”, Tiziano Ferro doesn't try to tone down: «That position has always been there. Now I use a sledgehammer, but there was no need for one slur to understand how I thought. It's just that perhaps age also leads me to be less restrained in my language. It's just a question of language. Before I said “we can't take it anymore”, now I say “fuck off”. He explained it to us a few hours before the start of the tour which from 30 May to 12 July 2026 will bring him back to Italian stadiums after over 300 thousand tickets already sold eight months before the start and live shows doubled in Milan and Rome. But the more time passes, the more Tiziano seems interested in describing the person rather than the character or the numbers he is able to generate. And in fact the conversation soon ends far from setlists, special effects and pre-sales. He spoke to us about nostalgia for Italy, about civil rights, about children, about politics, about collaboration between generations and about what it means to have a microphone in front of thousands of people.
At a certain point someone asks him what effect it has on him to look at his own country from afar, given that he has lived in the United States for years: «I don't have the attitude of someone who lives abroad because he feels above the country he comes from. In fact, I live almost like a refugee.” He doesn't go into details, he cites personal and legal reasons, but he reiterates the concept: «If I could, I wouldn't live in the United States. I miss Italy. Maybe Italy misses me too. I miss my friends, I miss the atmosphere, I miss the way people relate to each other.”
However, there is also something he doesn't like about our country: “The drift that civil rights have taken.” But immediately afterwards he brings everything back to the essence: «What happens on the street is different. I feel an evolution in people's emotional intelligence. I really feel it. And in Italians it is equal to that of the Spanish, the Germans, perhaps even higher than that of the English.” And this is where the discussion inevitably connects to politics. In the days in which Francesco De Gregori said he felt uncomfortable in front of artists who use the stage to make political proclamations, his response is not ideological: “When it comes to real politics I don't know how to comment on the comma of an article”, he admits, “but when I think that I bring my children here and they have fewer rights than other children, I get pissed off like a beast”. Because what Tiziano Ferro seems to reject is not the right of artists to expose themselves, but rather the idea of transforming themselves into professors: «I am not teaching, nor explaining. I'm not putting myself in the chair. I'm exposing myself.” So for him, telling a position doesn't necessarily mean asking someone to share it: «People then choose. I can give it a color.”
Photo: Andrea Bianchera
Ultimately it's the same philosophy that accompanies him when he talks about his latest album I'm greatwhich not surprisingly opens the concert with three consecutive songs before leaving room for the classics: I'm great, Broken heart And I pretend and push. A counterintuitive choice for an artist who could start with a flurry of hits: «I liked starting there because I'm great Today it has a huge meaning for me.” He reveals that that title created quite a few problems for him: “It gave me a headache.” Because for years, he explains, such a sentence would have been read as arrogance: “I didn't grow up in a world where you could tell yourself you were good.” Today, however, he feels he can give it to himself: «I can say that I am great for what I have done. And that's fine.”
And it is probably no coincidence that the theme of survival returns when he talks about children. Because the most surprising statement of the meeting comes right there: «The stage today is the day off of my life». He says that on his last tours he has brought with him the children, of whom he is foster carer: “I assure you that having two small children is an intense thing.” Then he continues: «Before the stage was a place full of adrenaline. Now is the place where I can finally be myself.” And for someone who for 25 years has described the concert as an almost sacred experience, it is a revolution: “I would never have thought that a concert could become my private moment.” Let alone inside a stadium with thousands of people: “But today it's like this.”
When we return to talking about music, another theme emerges that seems to be particularly close to his heart: the relationship with younger people. In the repack of I'm greatout today May 29th, involves Lazza, Shiva, Ditonellapiaga, Ariete, as well as Giorgia. Some of them will also take to the stage of the stadium tour: Lazza will be a guest in Milan on 6 June, Ditonellapiaga and Shiva on 7 June, Giorgia and Ariete will instead arrive on the Roman dates. For Tiziano Ferro the reason is simple: «At their age I looked for collaborations with older artists and they almost never happened». He remembers the American records full of featurings that he bought in Latina, spending enormous sums on a boy of his age: «I grew up like that». Now he admits that he needs to be close to those who experience music as an absolute necessity: “I need to be with people for whom music is still everything.”
And he explains how the relationship has changed for him over the years: «At the beginning the music is everything, then it becomes something else». For some, he observes, other priorities arrive, for him the possibility of expressing himself has arrived: «Before music was the only way I had to speak. The only language I knew. Then I learned to say things in words too.” So music has become something else: «It's a bridge, an outlet, fun». Perhaps for this reason he doesn't miss the intimacy of clubs: «Intimacy isn't created by a club. Intimacy is created by telling each other the truth.” This is why he sees no contradictions between a full stadium and an authentic moment: «If I tell lies in a room with four people, intimacy doesn't exist. If instead I really tell myself, it can also exist in a stadium.”
On the stages of STADI26 there will be the classics, from Xdono to Relative Redfrom Black evenings to I'll take a photo of youfrom To my ety a The end. There will be the dance troupe, which has been missing for some time, and a production designed to span 25 years of career in reverse order, from the last album to the origins: «I wanted to go back to dancing a bit». Furthermore, he promises that there will be a lot of music: «I sing a lot. I always think of the concerts from which I leave happy, because the artists sang the songs I wanted to hear.”
