COVER ME | Music contest | NOI & Springsteen

Contest 2026

Presentation
Regulations
Cover me jury

Presentation

Cover me '26

The Premier Music Contest Dedicated to Bruce Springsteen

The Cover Me contest is organized by NOI & SPRINGSTEEN with the aim of celebrating the music of Bruce Springsteen while highlighting the talent of participating artists and bands. The initiative provides contestants with significant exposure through social media platforms, the annual Springsteen Festival in Bergamo, and various national radio stations.

This is a complimentary competition designed to select the finest performing artist or ensemble. The contest is open to all musicians; each participant or band may enter with one song selected from Bruce Springsteen’s extensive repertoire. The track must be reinterpreted and personalized by the artist while preserving its core essence and melody.

COVER ME The first musical contest dedicated to Springsteen

Regulations

Find out about the regulations and participate in the contest

REGULATIONS

Cover Me '26

THE PROJECT

Following the extraordinary 2025 edition of Cover Me held aboard the BORN TO CRUISE, we are pleased to present the 2026 edition of the first and only contest dedicated to Bruce Springsteen.

Key updates for this edition include the implementation of a single jury, which will evaluate performances based on two primary criteria:

Best Cover
Best Unreleased Song

Furthermore, participants are no longer required to submit a video. Instead, entry requires only an audio track in MP3 or WAV format, to be uploaded directly to the dedicated website during the registration process. The website will be updated to allow participants to upload their competition cover along with a signed release form to complete their registration. As in previous years, entry to the contest remains free.

DOWNLOAD THE CONSENT FORM ( directly from the website )

The selection process will proceed as follows:

REGISTRATION

Open from March 31 to April 30, 2026.

First Selection – Jury Evaluation

Results announced by May 15, 2026.
The Jury will select the top 20 covers.

Second Selection – Public Vote

Results announced by June 30, 2026.
The final ranking will be determined by the combined scores of the Jury and the public vote. The 10 finalists will be chosen based on their cumulative standings. Points will be awarded as follows: 10 points for first place, 9 points for second, descending to 1 point for tenth place. The ten artists with the highest aggregate scores from both rankings will proceed directly to the final.

THE FINAL

Sunday, September 6, 2026.
The finalist bands will perform both their cover and unreleased song live on the COVER ME stage. The winner of COVER ME 2026 will be determined by the live audience and the Jury, using the same voting procedure as the second selection phase. At the end of the event, awards will be presented for the Cover Me 2026 Winner and the Best Unreleased Song 2026.

PRIZES

1st Place: COVER ME 2026

A cash prize of €3,000 plus:

A live concert performance at the Druso in Bergamo.
Production of a professional music video.

Best Unreleased Song 2026

A cash prize of €1,000 plus:

Production of a professional music video.

Biographies

COVER ME jury

Leonardo Colombati (President)

Born in Rome in 1970, Leonardo Colombati is an acclaimed Italian novelist and literary curator. His novels include Perceber (Sironi 2005/ Fandango 2010), Rio (Rizzoli 2007), Il re (Mondadori 2009), 1960 (Mondadori 2014), Estate (2018), Sinceramente non tuo (Mondadori 2022), and his most recent work, Non vi sarà più notte (Mondadori 2026). His literary essays are collected in the volume Scrivere per dire sì al mondo (Mondadori 2021).
As an editor and curator, he has overseen major cultural publications including Bruce Springsteen: Come un killer sotto il sole (Sironi 2007 – Mondadori 2021), La canzone italiana 1861–2011. Storia e testi (Mondadori-Ricordi 2011). A prominent cultural journalist, he has contributed to leading Italian newspapers and magazines such as Corriere della Sera, Il Messaggero, Grazia, and Vanity Fair.
He is co-director of the Italian literary magazine Nuovi Argomenti and Vice President of the Viareggio-Rèpaci Literary Prize. In 2015, together with writer Emanuele Trevi, he co-founded the Molly Bloom Academy, a creative writing school where he serves as Rector.

Patrizia De Rossi

Born in Rome, Patrizia De Rossi is an Italian journalist, author, and radio broadcaster with a long-standing focus on rock music and popular culture. Her radio work includes collaborations with Italian stations Rai Stereo Notte, Radio M100, Radio Città Futura, Enel Radio, and Oltrelago.it.
She was the first person in Italy to graduate in North American literature with a thesis dedicated to the poetry of Bruce Springsteen. Her publications on the artist include Bruce Springsteen e le donne: She’s the One (2014), a book about female characters in the Boss’s songs and how they have changed over the years, while remaining an essential and fundamental constant, and Bruce Springsteen: The Last Man Standing (2021), an exploration of Springsteen’s relationship with American identity. In April 2018 she participated in the International Conference Bruce Springsteen Darkness on the Edge of Town: an International Symposium, held at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, NJ. Her presentation will be published in a special issue of Interdisciplinary Literary Studies (Penn State University Press).
Since 2015, she has been editing the Bruce Springsteen Fan Area section for the website www.spettakolo.it
In addition to her work on Springsteen, she has authored books on major artists including He has published books on: Luciano Ligabue (Certe notti sogno Elvis, 1995, the first ever on the rocker from Emilia, with a preface by Ligabue himself, Quante cose che non sai di me – Le 7 anime di Ligabue, 2011 Arcana Edizioni, Re start, 2020, Diarkos); Ben Harper (Arriverà una luce, with Ermanno Labianca, 2005, Nuovi Equilibri), Gianna Nannini (Fiore di Ninfea, 2012, Arcana Edizioni), Patti Smith (La forza della parola, 2021, Diarkos), Måneskin (Italian Rock 2.0, 2022, Diarkos, Né zitti né buoni, 2024), Ultimo (Una voce mille storie, 2025, EPC Libri).
From 2006 to 2024, she was Editor-in-Chief of Hitmania Magazine, a periodical covering music, entertainment and youth culture. She is the author of several entries in the Enciclopedia della Musica Contemporanea Treccani (Treccani Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Music), edited and curated by Ernesto Assante and Sandro Cappelletto, published in 2025.

AmbraMarie

Ambramarie (b. 1987) is an Italian singer, songwriter, and radio personality active across the contemporary rock scene. She is a host on the Italian rock station Radio Freccia (RTL 102.5), where she presents the program Electric Ladyland live on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 2pm to 5pm.
In 2020, they released their first album, Sopravvivere agli amanti (Surviving Lovers), whose title is a tribute to Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, featuring Filippo Cornaglia (Niccolò Fabi, Andrea Laszlo De Simone, Bianco) on rhythm section. In 2024, they released their second album, Cani come figli (Freecom), which featured Carmelo Pipitone (long-time guitarist with Marta Sui Tubi) and Corimè, as well as continuing collaboration with Filippo Cornaglia. Among AmbraMarie's various experiences, she was also the face of “Occupy Deejay”, with a column dedicated to the world of rock on DeejayTv, and hosted “Italians Do It Better” on Rock Tv, interviewing Manuel Agnelli (Afterhours), Cristiano Godano (Marlene Kuntz), Motta, Calcutta, Marta Sui Tubi, Zen Circus, Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti and many others. With her project “AmbraMarie”, she has two albums to her credit: the first, “3anni2mesi7giorni”, worked on with artistic producer Alessandro Paolucci (Prozac+, Vanilla Sky, Baustelle) and Steve Lyon (Depeche Mode, The Cure, Paul McCartney), and the second, ‘Bruciava Tutto’, featuring her friend Omar Pedrini on one track of the album. She competed as a soloist in the second edition of X Factor in 2009.

Ezio Guaitamacchi

Ezio Guatamacchi is an Italian music journalist, critic, author, broadcaster, musician, and live performer. Since 2014, he has directed the music publishing series for the Italian publisher Hoepli. Over several decades, he has founded influential music magazines including Hi, Folks! and JAM, and has collaborated with major Italian media outlets such as Italia 1, Canale 5, Telepiù, Odeon, Canal Jimmy, Sky Arte, Raisat, Radio Rai, RSI, Lifegate and Radio Popolare.
When he's not directing JAM TV, teaching journalism and music criticism at the CPM in Milan, writing an essay on rock (he has published 25...) or on stage with his guitars recounting his Rock Files, he plays tennis, supports Milan and travels the world, often “on the road with rock”.

Giorgio Berta

Born in Bergamo on 22.03.1960, he received his degree from the University of Bergamo in Economics and Commerce with a thesis in Tax Law regarding corporate accounting obligations.
Since 1988 he has been registered in section A of the Register of Certified Accountants and Accounting Experts of Bergamo.
After conducting the activity for five years at another professional’s studio until 1993, he opened his own office in Bergamo.
Currently he carries out his professional activities mainly in Bergamo, in via Mazzini, 4, in the Berta, Nembrini, Colombini and Associates studio of which he holds an absolute majority. Two partners and around 80 employees support him in the business. Members of the professional register amount to around 35. The firm conducts its activities mainly based on tax, corporate and insolvency consulting. A merger with another professional firm made it possible to include job counselling among the activities it offers. The studio is part of the professional ACB network.
From 2015 to 2017 he was the effective statutory auditor of Banca Popolare di Bergamo and holds the same role within the UBI group in relation to a number of investee companies.
Since 1988 he has been collaborating with the University of Bergamo where to date, he has held various positions. He has collaborated with industry magazines, in which he has published:
• “IVA sulle attività finanziarie” in “IVA 96 Analisi di alcune significative fattispecie giuridiche” edited by Claudio Sacchetto, Giuffrè (publisher).
• Il software destinato alla vendita” in “Società e Diritto” no. 1, May 1995 Il sole XXIV ore (publisher).
• “Affitto d’azienda: aspetti civilistici e tributari” in “Società e diritto” no. 12 December 1994 Pirola (publisher). On a regular basis for a certain period of time, he wrote for “L’informatore Pirola”.

He has also contributed, as co-author, to the publication of many other texts in the field. He began playing tennis at the age of 7 and in the early 1980s earned a B-level player classification.
Music, however, is his great passion. His father was an acclaimed pianist and influenced him. He bought his first record (Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull) at the age of 12, and still today, buys at least one CD or vinyl record daily, either physically or downloading it from Apple Music.
His favourite musical genres are soul, blues, rock 'n' roll, and jazz (Springsteen, Otis Redding, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Tom Waits, Van Morrison, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Snarky Puppy, Talking Heads, and Tim Buckley are some of my favourite artists), and being President of the Foundation.
The Donizetti Theatre has brought him closer in recent years to other genres such as symphonic music and opera.
He plays (terribly, in his opinion) flute, sax and percussion.
With a certain regularity, he has been writing about music for at least 10 years for an online newspaper in the province of Bergamo, Bergamonews, which has a daily readership of over 150,000.
A few years ago, he got involved in organizing the first event in Bergamo with the theme of Springsteen and his art.

Ermanno Labianca

ERMANNO LABIANCA (Rome, 1961) has collaborated with leading Italian music publications and contributed to various music encyclopedias (24 Mila Dischi, L’Espresso, Arcana, Treccani). His publications include American Skin: vita e musica di Bruce Springsteen (Giunti 2000, 2002), Like a Rolling Stone: 40 anni di cantautori americani (Giunti 2004), Canzone per te: Appunti di musica leggera (Arcana 2006), Springsteen 50: 1973-2023 (Rizzoli Lizard 2023). For Baldini Castoldi Dalai, in 2009 he translated Magic in the Night: parole e musica di Bruce Springsteen (Magic in the Night: the words and music of Bruce Springsteen) by Scott Kirkpatrick. For Arcana, he translated and annotated Bruce Springsteen's lyrics in three volumes. On television, from the late 1980s to the present day, he has written dozens of programmes in the entertainment, games shows and institutional fields. He has years of experience in independent record production and at a multinational company, Sony Music, where he worked for the Columbia label. He has followed many of the artists he has worked with as a writer in television productions: Il mondo a 45 giri (Luca Barbarossa), 1,2,3 Fiorella (Fiorella Mannoia), Festival di Sanremo e Uà: Uomo di varie età (Claudio Baglioni), Stramorgan (Morgan), La Nottataccia (Marco Conidi/L'Orchestraccia), Gli occhi del Musicista (Enrico Ruggeri). In 2010, he founded the independent record label Route 61 Music, of which he is the artistic director.