RUSH! is the third album from the Italian rock band and the first since lighting up the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest with their unexpected win. Since that victory, Måneskin have become a worldwide pop sensation, with their swaggering rock-star personas and catchy yet gritty songs helping them carve out a distinctive niche in the musical landscape. RUSH!, which features behind-the-scenes work from pop architects like Max Martin and Rami Yacoub, arrived at the end of a whirlwind 18 months for the four-piece that included collaborations with Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello (who appears on the RUSH! track “GOSSIP”) and Iggy Pop. And almost a year on from its release, the band unveiled this edition, RUSH! (ARE U COMING?), which adds four reliably storming, electric new tracks to the original lineup. “It’s incredible to think what’s happened in only one year and a half after everything completely changed in our lives,” bassist Victoria De Angelis says. In some ways, the period since Eurovision has been business as usual for Måneskin, who embarked on their first North American headlining tour in 2022. “We feel good because we’ve been touring the whole year,” says drummer Ethan Torchio. “So, now the machine is very well-oiled—everything comes easier than normal for us. In general, we’ve always enjoyed playing live a lot because we feel like it’s the cherry on top of all the work that we’ve done.” But RUSH! represents a new chapter for the band, with stylistic shifts that show how their pop savvy is complemented by a bone-deep love of rock and all its trappings. “There’s a lot of variety compared to our previous records,” De Angelis notes. “Instead of starting from the centre and trying to [spin] out from it, we started from four different places, which are our four individualities,” adds lead vocalist Damiano David. De Angelis says that being generous with her bandmates’ artistic idiosyncrasies made for a more exciting studio process that included added risk-taking. “It’s better if we embrace our differences—even if someone has a different taste in a direction I might not be the first fan of,” she says. “Same goes for them. It’s better to embrace all our differences and give space to everyone to express themselves and be happy and be represented by the record. That’s why we had to really open our minds and challenge our boundaries: Some things we do, we would never have done without each other.”
- Jann
- Palaye Royale