Win a chair and hold on to it. This is the final mission for the aspiring contestants of X Factor 2025, the decisive challenge to earn a pass to the live shows and compete on a real stage, a real show, a real live TV broadcast. Three Sardinians will have to play the cruel game of musical chairs tonight: eroCaddeo from Sinnai, Arborea drummer Mattia Pilloni, competing with Plastic Haze, and Sakina Sanogoh, born in the Ivory Coast and now a permanent resident of Cagliari.
At the Bootcamps they got yeses from Achille Lauro, Paola Iezzi, Francesco Gabbani and Jake La Furia, but now the toughest test awaits them.
For the Last Call , the iconic chairs and the dreaded "switches" return . Each judge will have to choose only three artists: after their performance, the one who gets promoted will be able to sit until all the chairs are filled, at which point the "switches" will begin, and every spot will be up for grabs until the last one. Let's not forget the four "favorites," the singers who at Bootcamp earned the X Pass from every judge and who perhaps already have a spot on their favorite team (but the history of talent shows that this is by no means a given).
At the end of the selection process, twelve artists will compete in live shows from Milan's Teatro Repower, starting October 23rd on Sky and NOW. They will compete for seven weeks, culminating in December 4th, when the winner will be announced in Naples' Piazza del Plebiscito, just like last year, in the most-watched finale of the last four seasons.
Damiano Caddeo, aka eroCaddeo, 27 years old and winner of the 2021 Radiolina Contest, is aiming for the top but can already be more than satisfied : an unreleased song, "Punto," and a cover of Venerus's "Sei acqua" were enough to intrigue thousands of followers won over by the sweetness of his lyrics, voice, and sound. Born in Modena but raised in Sinnai and now in Turin, in April he released his first EP, "Scrivimi quando arrivi," which, along with its "Luglio," symbolizes Sardinian sunsets with the line "for me you'll be like Cagliari after 7."
Pilloni, half shaved and half covered in long braids, is one of the best drummers to ever perform on X Factor. The credit isn't his, he says, deflectingly, but his father Marco Pilloni, former lead singer of Barritas, "who even today, at 71, continues to make music." With Plastic Haze, first with Muse's "Time Is Running Out " and then with Adele's "Rolling in the Deep," he helped establish their rock and alternative creed: "They call us tamarri," and that may be true, but they perform "without filters or autotune."
Finally, there's Sakina Sanogoh, 26, who mesmerized with "Ready or Not" by the Fugees and "Fallin'" by Alicia Keys. Originally from the Ivory Coast but arriving in Italy as a child, she divides her time between Milan and Cagliari. For her, singing is also a family affair: "My father is a bass player; I met him growing up. Thanks to music, our souls have reconnected."
