ANGELINA MANGO - Caramé

I'm not a star

Not even by mistake

I'm a lifelong freshman

With a straight-A life

I'm no trendsetter

I like playing tressette

Algida's red chairs

Running off far away in a camper van

The return of Angelina Mango came without lead singles or previews. After a providential withdrawal following months of media overexposure that had become harmful to her health, the young winner of Sanremo 2024, a child of art but gifted with her own talent, returns with "Caramé". She's changed, probably because her life has changed over the last two years. Fragile, emotional, in search of a small, sweet serenity, this Angelina Mango has taken a couple of steps back from the relentless hit-making machine of the mainstream, releasing a personal, intimate and perhaps even slightly naive album, certainly improvable but one whose difference is hard not to notice.

“Caramé (intro)” e “7up”, in continuum, aprono chiarendo subito che sarà una riscoperta: un frammento diaristico dondola tra electropop e ballata pianistica, con rinforzi di archi, per poi adagiarsi su un pop emotivo dominato dai synth e dalla voce, sempre molto espressiva, della titolare.

Love, life, youth, and her own fragility are at the heart of the whole album, told in all their contradictions in the fast-paced verses full of everyday life and bad luck in "Le scarpe slacciate", but also in the more intimate, pained and introspective "Ioeio" (feat. Madame), balanced between acoustic and digital, exploring her relationship with herself as well as her struggle with the monster of anorexia ("Un piatto che avanzo", "Conto le calorie come i minuti che mancano").

From a young pop star like her, it's not a given to hear everyday stories that are so easy to relate to, like the electronic pop of "La vita va presa a morsi", or to feel the urgent need for expression in "Aiaiai" (featuring Calcutta and Dardust). As a singer, Angelina Mango has grown further still, as shown in the somewhat predictable piano ballad "Come un bambino", in the more electronic "Velo sugli occhi", but more generally throughout the whole tracklist, where her voice is the true protagonist. There's certainly less rap, though it hasn't disappeared entirely, leaving more room for a vocal style that can turn frantic and then stretch out into long vocal runs, sometimes all within a single track, as in "Ci siamo persi la fine". The singer's choice, evidently shared by her multi-instrumentalist brother Filippo and producer Giovanni Pallotti, is to convey expressive urgency, to lay herself bare before the listener.

"Caramé" is an intimate, often melancholy, fragile and emotional, deeply personal record. Inside it, Angelina Mango tells her own story, sparing no effort to show herself as wounded yet hopeful, even ambitious. There's less Rosalia and more Billie Eilish, but also Elisa and, why not, more singer-songwriter territory. It's also a somewhat confused album, reflecting a moment of great change: the songs are blurred snapshots of a young singer being reborn after a crisis. It's almost a (new) debut, a playlist of a period of crisis and rebirth that, far from perfect, reignites attention on a name that risked being erased by early success.

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24/10/2025