Damiano David IS REVIVING THE ROCK STAR

He became one of the world's biggest musicians after winning Eurovision with his band, Måneskinand now the Italian singer has his sights on a global solo career. Over espresso and cigarettes in Rome, Damiano David argues that pop music desperately needs a high-fashion frontman.

- MINA TAVAKOLI

DAMIANO DAVID, THE frontman of Måneskin, fiddles with the ashtray. Out in the Piazza del Popolo, un minuto a piedi from the hotel courtyard where we sit, a cast of whimsical men has apparently been let loose on the women of Rome. A lollipop salesman is busily seducing a crush of tourists. The maître d' of a fancy restaurant is entertaining his waitresses by shooing a pigeon with his hat. Not one, but two jesters-first juggling, then dropping, navel oranges-are blowing kisses at the flock of pearly signoras who stopped to lob their fruit back. "Yes," says David, almost listlessly, "everybody is like a comedian." In his own way, David is a performance artist of this particularly Roman strain of rakish male swag. He is the lead singer of a glamorous and extraordinarily horny interpretation of a rock band, whose rise to international megastardom reads like an absurd epic. It began with David, a street musician on the tourist-congested thoroughway of the Via del Corso, and reached one of multiple climaxes when David-shirtless in leather pants, eyeliner, and Louboutin heels-became the winner of the carnivalesque European talent show Eurovision.

David's cock-rocking Måneskin performance made him a muse of former Gucci designer Alessandro Michele and a beloved target of paparazzi, and, in one instance, it earned him a rebuke by the sitting French president (more shortly).

"Romans have this sense of humor," he says, lighting a cigarette. But the sword, he warns, is double-edged. "It's definitely a city of judgers," he says.