Vale LP and Lil Jolie will never be as you want them

“We did couple therapy, it was probably the first time that it happened with friends.” Maybe it's a joke, maybe not. What is certain is that seeing Vale LP and Lil Jolie together has a strange effect. Positive, let's be understood. The Brat Summer of 2024 has not passed for much, and we all remember them: “People Say We're Alike / They say We've Got the Same Hair”. They say we look like us, that we have the same hair.

And they are the same age, a born in 2000 (Angela Ciancio, Aka Lil Jolie), the other in 1999 (Valentina Sanseverino, Aka Vale LP). Bells both, from Caserta, and it is there that their friendship was born, a room partnership resulting in a house together with Milan, a shared bed, a relationship that seems to be strict in friendship and that, precisely for this reason, escapes the definitions.

“We are made to be together. Indeed we look a lot like, in the photos from small we seem the same. Who knows, genetics. Our relationship is impossible to explain, we don't explain it either ».

They speak almost with a single breath, Angela and Valentina. And now, at the Sanremo Festival, their voices will come together from the stage, arrived in the new proposals section by passing from Sanremo Giovani 2024, with the song Tell me when you're ready to make love. “You seem to be afraid of me / and I don't give a reason to what you don't do.” The therapy also shines through the lyrics of the song, which speaks of two people, perhaps more, who have not yet happened well, this thing about relationships, sentimental and sexual. Who try to understand something about the other without being hurt. Which, perhaps, are still not ready (to make love).

«The piece was born a couple of years ago, I was writing my album (Guagliona, NDA) And I had just entered Sugar. I was working on him with Francesca (Madame, NDA), I wanted to insert it on the album but then I don't know, I thought there were more rumors, that she was not only telling my story. That could be a collective resonance case ». So says Valentina. And when Angela returned from Friends (in which he participated in 2023), they decided to start working together with new music. “I brought the piece to Angela and asked her to sing the verse she does” but you know that I am the right one for you / the only woman who will be able to make you cry. ” They came the chills, something powerful was happening. I understood that it was true, she was the right one ».

The girls are romantic for their admission, but the energy is there, undeniable. I understood that that was their song, the pull and inner pump began, and with the external shouting that always says that you have to try, with Sanremo, you have to get on that stage. Valentina had already been to Sanremo Giovani 2023, then the final had blocked it. She would also have liked to be in his, he says. The presence of Angela, as often happens, gave her the strength and safety of restoring the carousel. And the results did not late to arrive: “Ok, let's do it.”

Photo: Tommaso Biagetti

Except that, remembering it: in the song of Charli XCX remixed with gross, the two artists speak of their relationship between friendship and rivalry, collaboration and gossips. And also in the case not of Angela and Valentina, but of Lil Jolie and Vale LP, the itchy question goes up: but how do you do only-top friends?

«The competition does not belong to us, at least not that of the numbers and the working championship. There is a race between us, of course, that it is the same one we have with our other friends who work in music: we want swagger one more than the other, we foment and inspire each other for swagger more and more. Because we respect ourselves artistically, not only as people, and we respect the judgment of each other ». Indeed, they are almost afraid of it: «Angela returns home in the evening, I ask her as she went to the studio, if she does the shy and does not want to make me feel things I have already understood that she has done a hit. It is normal, that's the way, the limit exceeds it when you do something that you didn't expect to yourself. You think, this after ten years that we know each other is still ashamed of me ». Competition never, always friends.

Other than competition: the difficult thing, in the relationship between the girls, is to manage the immensity of what they give each other. «There are many, many things. Things that make the external perception of our ambiguous relationship, often, and okay, this is also the truth. We also talk about this in the song, because it is us, it is our story ». A project realas they are. Zero Bullshit. The plot are them, there is nothing to add. «We speak how we eat. We do not put too much, we are simple provincial girls. Simplicity and truth always work. So we are happy ».

Photo: Tommaso Biagetti

To reach it, however, it is necessary to browse the superstructures. Get their own appearance to music. Among these are also the requests for clarification, to come out in the open. To satisfy, in a sense, the cravings of the curious. Give answers.

“We want to stay at the moment, we are fine when we are present, when we don't get conditioned.” They ask them to be like their generation, the Z, to return to stereotypes. To be cataloged, here or there. «Honestly we do not feel represented by the Z generation, but not even any other. How is it possible that a concept contains such a large group of people? The fluidity is this, accept the fact that the world has always been made by different people, not cataloged ». Put the case, Valentina makes me: «If I like women, we place the case, and you like women, we are still two different people. Art, literature, music have always talked about this. How we feel the same things, but we live in different ways, and therefore we want to say in different ways. We represent only ourselves. Maybe five hundred years ago there was a woman equal to me ».

Photo: Tommaso Biagetti

Ok, but the studies are there, the data seem to speak clearly: the young people, to whom Angela and Valentina belong, would no longer want to make love. Tell me when you're ready, and maybe I'm never ready. «But look, I don't know, it's not that I live it different to me if a study comes out in a newspaper that says that people of my age do not fuck. We should try to understand at most what is under all this, because knowing how we relate to others makes us understand something about us. There are situations where you feel comfortable and you want to make love, others in which you don't want to do it ». The solution can be a community built in a different way. Lot and realize, say the girls, that you cannot marry only a cause. You cannot turn your face on what is not comfortable.

“Okay, it is difficult to catalog us. But we are only on the one hand: that of respect for others, letting everyone think what they want to think. Work on myself, understand where my thoughts ends and my action begins. We have much more important problems to deal with, then rather we put the education for affectivity in schools. Let's talk about feeling and how this defines us. Deconstruating is a sacrifice. It means saying: it's my problem. Then it becomes our».

The community, for girls, is the only possible dimension. But not in the morbid meaning that does not make you alone. Theirs is the desire for sharing, to deal with others. “I always do this example: when I cook I do it for ten, and I always leave the better bite to her,” this says Angela indicating Valentina. «All our friends are like us, we have chosen them. Together we are something, alone we are nothing. It is not a question of sacrifice, it is not at all ». Angela continues: «Now we sleep together with Vale, ok, but if I'm at home alone I call the friends who live nearby. We want to share, we want to create more and more ».

Will Sanremo throw them out of balance? “No. People are no longer in reality, it seems that everything is constantly idealized. We are not two Zen nuns, let's talk about things and difficulties because we live them firsthand. It is also what we say in the song: first you are afraid, then courage. Today things are fast and it is easy to end up in the ravine. Instead if I'm in the moment I can be with you, talk to you, get excited about this conversation, without thinking about the fact that you then have to write a piece on us ».

At this point therapy seems to me to have made it a little, together with the girls. I would like to know what to say for them, at their age, to be in love, because I don't know. Valentina pulls out a solution, like one who knows and protects. “It means light. Feel life, stay at the moment. When I feel alive I feel in love. Then you seem to do the revolution. When you think of the things you can't control, you're not alive ». Angela echoes her: «Yes. Love is when you don't have to control. ” Not, of course, understood as a submission of the other person, but as their own experience in the world. If you feel that you can rely on, that you are safe at the moment and excited, it could be love. Who knows, I don't know.

Photo: Tommaso Biagetti

It is only one of the many possibilities of these girls, wisdom of their age and who, until today, have fun discovering themselves, combining many things in their music. It comes to ask me – and to ask them – if they already know it, what they want to be now that they will call them women. «And who knows. I will carry with the consistency of the things we are doing together, the truth, speak earth earth », Angela replies. And it is worth: «I like to change, meet people, everyone is a journey and I want, to say, to always become the other person. So even on stage it is not you, don't take your ego, but your journey. Also because often your idea of ​​yourself moves a lot from the reality of the facts. You put expectations on you, while the truth is only now, that's what you are now. We have other rules of consistency ».

We look at each other and maybe I would like to continue, see them sit on the piano in the room, let them do. I also lose a little inside them. Instead I get up, I greet them, and I recommend a place to go to eat on the Riviera: Babeuf, in Sanremo. Just to not make mistakes.