Before the stages, the records and even Sanremo 2026, for Marie Antoinette and Colombre music was a question of shyness and urgency. A private matter which, at a certain point, began to ask for space, even at the cost of embarrassment. As they told us, for both of them the zero point is middle school and the trigger is a gift. For Marie Antoinette, a guitar and the discovery of the riot grrrls movement: «Girls who made music without filters and censorship, with bravado and great sincerity». A possible model to adhere to: “It seemed like a beautiful way of expressing oneself and I dreamed of doing that in life.” For Colombre, however, the first instrument is a violin, “very difficult”, so much so that playing it at the beginning was equivalent to “trying to play train tracks”. The decisive step came later, also for him with a guitar and the clear feeling that “a world had opened up”.
Exposing yourself, however, is almost never a natural gesture. It's something that passes through a threshold of discomfort. «The first time you put into practice great bravado and great embarrassment», says Colombre while explaining that mixture of unconsciousness and necessity that pushes you to make your first song heard even when «it's crazy shit». But music soon becomes a place of transformation: «When you go on stage you have the chance to become something else, releasing your insecurities. You enter a sort of catharsis, you spit out things that roar inside you.” For Marie Antoinette the experience is similar, but passed through a declared shyness: «It's a violence, but when you enter that space the shyness gives way to another part of you». So much so that “the body, even before the head, understands that that is a necessary direction”. Also because, he adds, exposure can become “a way to emancipate yourself from conditions from which you want to distance yourself”.
Photo: Pippo Moscati
Really understanding one's own voice, however, was a slow process over years of experimentation and satisfaction on the indie circuit: «It took as long as it took», admits Marie Antoinette, but without regrets. Every experience, every phase, every mistake seems to have contributed to getting closer to oneself: «At the beginning you are conditioned by people, other people's ideas, prejudices, expectations. Over time you come to look at yourself in the mirror and see exactly what you want to be.” An awareness in the making: «Maybe only the day before I die will I be able to say: here, this is me.”
The mistake, for both, is not something to be ashamed of but a learning method. Colombre had also sung it in one of his old songs, Desert: «And if you've made a mistake a thousand times it gets to a million». So Sanremo, in this sense, considers it a stage and not a goal: «I always trust in people's curiosity. If someone is affected by what he sees and hears, he will be the one to decide.” In fact, the idea is not to convince, but to leave a trace: “Whoever comes across us, in what we have done before, I hope will want to become curious.”
Even writing in two follows this logic. No all-out defense of one's intuitions, no struggle to prevail over others: «Our ego must have no place in writing. What wins is the song, the melody. I don't have to win. We are at the service of music”, underlines Marie Antoinette. Colombre reinforces the concept with a precise image, taken from the documentary on We Are The Worldwhen Quincy Jones had a sign hung at the entrance of the studio to also warn global stars (“Leave your ego at the door”): “It is always essential to be able to do something good together with others.”
Their relationship with the Festival, moreover, is anything but mythologized by the past. Marie Antoinette experiences it fatalistically: “It was never a goal, maybe that's why it happened.” The previous experience, from the cover of I'm not old enough of Gigliola Cinquetti in the duet with Levante and Francesca Michielin at Sanremo 2020, served to understand what to expect. And also what to fear. “Life has decided that this adventure or this trap befalls us.” Colombre even remembers a childhood festival that was rejected «with shots of Green Day blasted at maximum volume in the bedroom», before getting closer again: «Now, however, it's our turn. We'll go and see what Festival awaits us.”
However, it remains at the center of everything Happiness and that's itthe song that will take them to the Ariston stage, which expresses concepts very far from the logic linked to performance and feelings of guilt. Because the concept of happiness, for Marie Antoinette and Colombre, “is a political gesture and a collective work”. Not a reward, not a prize for those who made it: «These are distortions of turbocapitalism. We must take back happiness, it is ours and it does not depend on how well you perform, but on the fact that you are alive.” And Colombre clarifies that it is not a question of passivity: «We must just take it, without labeling it. There are no masters of happiness and there is nothing you can buy to ease the pain of not having achieved it.”
When they fear the risk of radical change after so much media exposure, they respond knowing full well what they would like to protect: “I wouldn't want it to trigger our brains in an unhealthy way by losing empathy,” says Colombre. And Marie Antoinette has no doubts: «Nothing will change, because the nature of people does not change. Nietzsche taught us this. If it changes, it means that it was already different upstream.”
When the discussion finally shifts to Eurovision and the stance of Levante, which in the event of victory would not participate if Israel were also present, their response is initially superstitious: “We won't win”, Marie Antoinette cuts short. While Colombre adds: «It doesn't mean that we don't have a position on the matter, but we will say it if anything we win. In that case we will have the answer because, rest assured, we will not end up in the group of the slothful.”
