Maneskin unveiled their latest single, “Supermodel,” on May 13, and members Damiano David, Ethan Torchio and Thomas Raggi recently sat down with Billboard to discuss the meaning behind their ode to Los Angeles’ clout-chasing culture.
The song, which features lyrics such as “When you’re not looking, she’s stealing your Basquiat/ Low-waisted pants on OnlyFans, I’d pay for that,” was inspired by living in L.A. for a long period of time, which frontman David says felt like “a mix of emotions.”
“What shocked us was there’s a lot of people who only try to get something from others and they want to be at the top of the spots and under the spotlight,” he explains. “But then you see that they’re playing a character. It was strange for us because we always saw these things on movies and TV shows and we always thought it was kind of exaggerated, but it’s not. For us, it was very automatic to write a song about it. That’s basically what we do. We see things that interest us and write songs about it.”
For the track, Maneskin worked with superproducer Max Martin, and David gushed over the experience. “It was cool because Max and all of his team, they never tried to force us to do something that we didn’t want to do,” he says. “He basically wanted to understand how we work and how we’re used to making music and what makes us happy about music. He was very humble and said, ‘How can I help you to make it global?’ It was fun because we were used to writing only by jamming. This new thing of using computers and stuff was really mind blowing for us.”
As for how they feel about releasing their upcoming album, David shares that the group makes music “to communicate what we’re not able to communicate with words and normal communication,” and to be able to do that is “inspiring and keeps this job the most beautiful job in the world.”
Watch Billboard‘s full interview with Maneskin above.
