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Swapping the grit of Måneskin’s discography for theatrical pop, Damiano David is proving his showmanship translates to any arena he chooses. And, his flair for the creative transcends media too – as the newly anointed first male global ambassador for Diesel, he’s bringing his panache and gender fluidity to the fashion world. It’s time for a fresh introduction, his name is Damiano David and…
Words ZOYA RAZA-SHEIKH
“Now I'm in complete control of my schedule so I'm having a week every once in a while just to be an animal,” Damiano David laughs. He doesn’t elaborate on the specifics, but in essence, one boon of being an international frontman making his solo debut is that these days, he only has himself to answer to. The administrative headache of aligning with his three bandmates’ calendars is side-stepped.
The lead vocalist of glam-rock four-piece Måneskin – on a break, rather than concluded – is, today, in New York, on the morning of his Man About Town shoot. It’s just one activity in a still frenetic promotional schedule, but one, he assures me, is more a balanced sort of chaos. His inaugural single, “Silverlines”, was released weeks prior. And, these days, he’s simply taking on the dance of life. You can find that very motto, ‘Il Ballo della vita’ (also the title of Måneskin’s debut album), tattooed in black wide-set letters across his chest. At only the age of 25, the groove he’s eased into in his first quarter-century is quite something. Eurovision victors in 2021, a whirlwind global breakout followed for Måneskin, which, by the following year, saw them play Coachella, garner a reported four billion global streams and become the first Italian rock group to crack the UK Top 10. In 2023, they were nominated for Best New Artist at The GRAMMYs.
But there’s always been something about David, in particular. His ineffable charisma gives him hypnotic star power onstage and off. Musical success was quickly followed by his emergence, in his own right, as a dominant international style and cultural presence, too. Today, in New York, his look is pared-down, donning a vintage white 1986-87 U.C Sampdoria shirt. It’s no surprise his former red carpet attire – the likes of custom laced-up Italian leather trousers and liberally applied black eyeliner – doesn’t make the early shoot call time at which we connect. However, there has been a shift in the image that David’s fans have been presented with in the months since he went solo, a more refined, classic figure unveiled – an unruly rebel grown up?
Damiano David wears Diesel full look from Resort 25 collection
Well, his new Diesel collaboration – more on that later – proves that, on the aesthetic front, he’s still a man of multitudes. But, the new beginning for his artistry arrived in September with a carefully curated introduction. A surprise 29-second teaser track and visual aptly titled: “My name is Damiano David” was released on social media and streaming platforms. Against grand, pillowy orchestral music, his voice imparts personal details – his date of birth and interests (music, arts and women, namely). Onscreen, he’s seen travelling in the backseat of a car, looking wistfully out of the window and sporting classic Hollywood suiting with a slick side-parted haircut to boot. It outlines the turning of a new page, a rebirth of sorts, confirmed when the final line reads: “My name is Damiano David, and today is the first day of my life.”
The clip was laden with suspense, but what it served to announce was something worthy of theatrics – his debut single. And, a week later, came “Silverlines”. Taken from his upcoming 2025 debut album, it’s a sweeping pop ballad, led by David’s towering vocals, exhibiting clearly that his is a voice that still more than shines away from revving electric guitars and the heavy thrum of bass. Produced by Labrinth – if there’s anyone you might call upon when finding your footing in new musical territory, it’s the English production virtuoso (Billie Eilish, Beyoncé, The Weeknd). His is a name one might not expect to see side-by-side with David’s, but getting Labrinth on board was a dream outcome, he says. “It was incredible. I met up with a friend of mine recently – he's British – and he told me, 'I remember three years ago in London, you telling me that you wanted to work with Labrinth,’” David recalls. “So, it's always been a goal of mine and having it be [part of] the first step in my solo career was extremely, extremely special. Having the blessing of such a huge artist gives me a lot of confidence and validation.”
The “Silverlines” video finds its setting in a theatre, and David’s pivot to the theatrical and ornate, both musically and aesthetically, was only turned up a gear for the track’s October follow-up, “Born With A Broken Heart”. A bittersweet pop number – it’s melancholic in lyrical content but driven by peppy production, anthemic chords and a decisive key change ahead of the final chorus. Sonically, it shares more lineage with an effervescent show tune than much of the Måneskin discography. A Singin’ In The Rain reference, Charleston choreography and dancers donning ostrich feather hats all contribute to the pastel-hued escapism of its video, too. Racking up over 1.1 million YouTube views in its first 48 hours of release, the visual flows as if you’re being pulled into a 1950s scene-by-scene play of a musical. “Artistically, I would say musical theatre is the thing that influenced me, but I'm not a musical theatre kid,” he explains, regarding his orientation to the discipline. “I used it to express a super wide range of emotions in a short amount of time. In a solid song, you can go through 10 different emotional states. And because the environment [of musical theatre] and that staging allows anything to happen, at any time, nothing feels weird. It's just this very magical world.”
Such reverie was something he was craving in life, last year, around the album’s inception. “When I started writing, I was in a very weird emotional space,” he says. “I was overwhelmed. I shut down and I wasn't feeling anything anymore.” He was struggling to foresee any solution to the challenges inflicting his mind, and so “Born With A Broken Heart” was his effort to parlay that intensity into something positive. “To transform what was originally a struggle into something more than beautiful.”
He’d recently started dating his now girlfriend, American musician Dove Cameron, at the time of the track’s creation and, lyrically, the single ruminates on the anxiety of previous heartbreak curtailing the ecstasy of new love. “I've been trying to change / Trying to find somebody to love me,” David sings in its chorus. “I was extremely closed off [at that time] which is weird for me because it's really not [like] me,” he says. “I'm an extremely passionate and open person. I was in this weird state that I really didn't know how to navigate.” Their relationship blooming in the months since has reconfigured the palette of experience and emotions he can draw from when writing. For instance, he now finds inspiration in the beauty of mundanity, of the slower life he enjoys with Cameron, in which he just feels like a normal person. “I was inspired by having human time,” he says. “I wrote the album while my relationship was becoming serious, so there was a lot of inspiration.”
Damiano David wears Diesel full look from Spring/Summer 2025 show collection
Wearing his emotionality front and centre and having to take sole ownership for the feelings and views his art conveys is an adjustment, though. Having been in a band since 2016, David has learned to play as part of a team. But, he’s ready for that autonomy. “I'm still very young but a major difference [nowadays] is my mental process. I feel way more mature and even if I express a sensitive topic that not everybody's going to agree with, I know that [it’s just me] saying it. I'm taking accountability for it and I'm not fucking it for anybody else, so it's easier on that side. It's my own interpretation of my own story and no one can correct me.”
Wherever that story takes him, the shapeshifting he’s already proven capable of indicates that his career will be nothing if not heterogeneous. And, as ever, outside of music, David’s been busy lately. A previous campaign with Gucci set him in good stead in the fashion world but, now, the artist’s attention is on another of his home country’s fashion institutions – Diesel. A history-making move, in June, he was announced as the brand’s first-ever global male ambassador.
Traversing gender boundaries is a common thread in his sartorial expression, with David a firm believer that accessibility and empowerment should be central to our relationship with clothes. Omitting binary restrictions when it came to a collaborative collection with the brand was therefore key. “I hate when you go shopping and there are places that have the women's side and it's huge and there are a lot of clothes but, then, the men's side is tiny and sad. I think, for a lot of guys, seeing a piece of clothing in the women's section stops them from buying it, even if they actually like it, because they feel the shame of going there. I don't care. I just go there and ask for a bigger size but I know other people can overthink, so I wanted to [make] neutral clothes so you can't really separate them.”
Damiano David wears Diesel full look from Resort25 collection.
With David’s interests now leading his new career direction, he reflects on the prospect of applying his fashion aptitude to football apparel in the future. Given his throwback Sampdoria shirt, it’s clear that a fan of the sport and its terrace wear sits before me. And, as it happens, he’s just waiting for the call. “I support Roma, but this [U.C. Sampdoria jersey] is one of the most beautiful. It's vintage,” he says proudly. “Arsenal is my UK team. Arsenal and Roma have a lot in common. We're good, but never good enough!”
Moving forward, for David, life is all about growth. He’s self-aware of his connection to past projects and genre labels, but he’s ready to find his own direction. And, for now, he wants listeners and fans to embrace him as he is. “[The album] is very, very clearly what was going on in my brain for two years. It's very honest. A lot of sounds are fun and there are no masks. It's very organic and human. It's like a new introduction of myself to the world.” No doubt, the questions of Måneskin will always keep cropping up but, for now, David is ready to prove he can do it all on his own.
As for an existing cultural text he’d compare the record to? He chuckles and answers thoughtfully: “I would say The Greatest Showman. But not because I'm the greatest showman, but because all of the songs are about getting over stuff, finding yourself and [realising] you're not a weirdo, but you're special. That's the core message.”
Damiano David wears Diesel full look from Diesel x Damiano David capsule collection
JMC: You're the Man About Town. You're so prolific. You're at the centre of culture almost every decade, I’m not sure of anyone else who has been there [as long]. And you're not just the ultimate artist, you are bankable and you're cool and you see the country and all these things with your band. And you have a beautiful family. And you always look good doing it.
JG: You told my story. Wow, it's never been said more exaggeratedly or beautifully. Thank you so much.
JMC: Is this how you pictured your life when you were young? When did it shift? Did your parents have an effect on that?
JG: I grew up in Pittsburgh, of course, and my dad was a doctor. We didn't know anybody in show business. My dad’s father came over from Russia or Ukraine, was named Povartzik, changed his name to Goldblum, and had a luggage store and a candy store. As my mother used to say, they were quite poor. [My dad] wanted to make something of himself, and so he said, ‘I’m either going to be a doctor or an actor.’ One time he stuck his head in the back of an acting class and said to himself, ‘Oh, this is out of my league.’ So that's when he decided to be a doctor. My mom also came over from the same several villages or shtetls in Eastern Europe. Ashkenazi Jews, all of them. I did that show Finding Your Roots recently. And there's not a variance in the strain until me and [my wife] Emilie [Livingston]. We've diversified the seed a little bit. But I'm 100% Ashkenazi Jew.
My mom, for one reason or another, had some flair for acting and a scout, whatever that meant, from New York came to West Virginia to see her in a play. They said to her mom, my grandmother, ‘Oh, we've got to get her to New York and she's got to be an actor.’ And her mom put her foot down and said, ‘No’. And that was that. So maybe I inherited some hot potato aspiration to do something like that. When I was a kid early on, I had this burning idea. [My parents] stayed passionate about going to the theatre and showed us ballet and art and gave us piano lessons. Then I took a drama class and got the idea – ‘Yeah, I want to be an actor.’ But I didn't know what it entailed, how that could possibly work, until one thing led to another, and I wound up at the neighbourhood playhouse, studying with Sandy Meisner and miraculously fell into a job on The Two Gentlemen of Verona. I went to Broadway with it after being in Shakespeare in the Park. I was 19, and I understudied Eglamour, who was played by Alvin Lum, and went on once during that year. How about that? Anyway, things have proceeded. Now I pick the things I want to do, luckily, and look at me – I’m getting as delicious an opportunity as ever working with you.
Damiano David wears Diesel full look from Diesel x Damiano David capsule collection
Jeff wears full look SAINT LAURENT
Tickets to Damiano's global tour are on sale now at at damianodavidofficial.com
Photography by Brendan Wixted
Styling by Michele Potenza
Words by Zoya Raza-Sheikh
Editorial Director Charlotte Morton
Editor Andrew Wright
Art Director Michael Morton
Fashion Director Luke Day
Production Director Lola Randall
Art Direction Intern Natasha Lesiakowska
Grooming by Kaori Chloe Soda using MAC Cosmetics
Videography by Mylo Butler
Special thanks to BABE Studios
