Read the translation of Vogue Italia’s article and interview with Damiano below:
Damiano David on the cover of Vogue Italia January 2025—shot by Steven Klein—shares in this exclusive interview his life in Los Angeles, the new album and tour, his relationship with fashion, and happiness.
It must have been difficult, at just 24 years old, to move to the other side of the world, to Los Angeles. But that’s exactly what Damiano David did: he left Rome, stepping away from his family, friends, and the other members of Måneskin, to create his solo album set to release in 2025. The kind of leap into the unknown that an artist has to make at some point in life: a leap toward oneself.
“At first, it was truly frightening,” he shares. “It was a cultural shock. And it was hard to find my place in that city.”
With his white shirt unbuttoned, revealing his famous tattoos, Damiano appears calm as we talk. Nothing betrays the fear he felt upon arriving in Los Angeles.
“If you’re European, the first thing that shocks you is the fact that there’s no one on the streets,” he says. “There are no bars or venues with outdoor seating, no squares where people gather. It’s a city where people don’t walk, whereas in Rome, that’s all you do… also because it takes courage to drive there. Los Angeles sometimes feels like a desert—it makes you feel a bit lonely.”
How did he handle this situation while also working on an album?
“Everything happened very quickly,” he shares. “I told my manager I wanted to do it, and ten days later, I was in Los Angeles with sessions booked, a house rented for six months, and no one by my side. No friends, no girlfriend, no one. But it was the best thing for me.”
He explains, “I didn’t have a background there, and basically, I could be whoever I wanted to be. Because no one knew me. That allowed me to set aside everything I had done up to that point and build my environment from scratch: new people, new places, new musicians, new writers. And, of course, that was hugely inspiring. I worked with so many different people, especially in the first few months, because what I was really looking for wasn’t the biggest producer out there but a space where I could feel at ease.”
And, surprisingly for an artist so far from home, he found it almost immediately:
“It was a big room where, by the end of the day, there were about eight people,” he says. “We went camping, spent time in Joshua Tree, in Malibu… In the end, it felt like I was just hanging out with friends while writing some music, and that made the whole experience so much lighter and more fun. It didn’t really feel like work. I’d wake up in the morning excited to go to the studio. It was a feeling I had lost over the years. So, it was very thrilling for me to feel like I was moving forward again.”
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