Mina
Mina Celentano

THE REVIEW

MINACELENTANO (1998) s.v.

Late December 1998. In a cinema that no longer exists today, in an overcrowded screening room (back when people still went to the movies), my friend and I are waiting for "The Truman Show" to start. Beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Before that, the usual trailers. "Life is Beautiful"; "Three Men and a Leg"; "Mulan" (wow, we were happy and didn’t even know it). After the trailers end, the movie starts. No, wait, there’s a cartoon. Two ducks that look like someone, wait, who is it? Ah yes, Celentano and Mina. We were 14: Celentano we’d seen more or less on TV, Mina had been introduced to us by our mothers. And, in a sort of Disney-like Pinocchio village, the two of them start singing a song in Apulian dialect that keeps obsessively repeating "Che t'aggia dì, che t'aggia fà", and that’s how I discovered the term, completely unknown to me at the time, "paliatone". My friend and I look at each other like, what the hell is going on? After 5 interminable minutes, the ducks finally get lost and the film starts. Years later I realized it was a parody of "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" with Duck-Celentano playing Marcello Mastroianni and Duck-Mina as Sophia Loren.

And I also learned that the song was taken from what was widely defined as the "event-album" of the year: "MinaCelentano". It sold almost 2 million copies (it’s the second best-selling album ever in Italy) and, in fact, the promotional battage bordered on stalking: TV, radio, billboards, McDonald’s (even there!), cinemas, theatres. Wherever you turned, it was shoved in your face: in the end you either bought it or hated it. Thankfully, the only consolation, social networks didn’t exist yet. 2 million copies, I mean 2: and it’s a work that’s, for the most part, negligible and broadly a failure. Impossible to classify, to give it a score: 1 star according to Debaser’s standards? Too much. Half a star? Not possible. Let’s just say, no rating, famo prima.

The lead single was "Acqua e sale", which is also the only decent thing on the album. Decent, not beautiful. At least, over the years, the song hasn’t gone out of style (especially in karaoke it’s still a big hit, but then again, even Jalisse do great at karaoke!), but as for the other 9 songs, I don’t think anyone remembers anything. Maybe, and that’s a big maybe, "Brivido felino". The rest is a misery. And that’s a real shame given the names of the two artists "playing" and the two giants producing it: Mina’s PDU and, above all, Mediaset, which was probably happy with the sales but not so much from an artistic point of view (and yes, I know Mediaset cared about the money, not art, but still...). Several tracks are written by Audio 2 who, because they’d nailed a successful tune a few years before ("Alle venti"), get called in to save the day, as if they were the Pink Floyd or something. Even "Acqua e sale" has some pretty cringeworthy lyrics (the bit about the souped-up motorbike is pure horror cinema), and pretty much all the arrangements sound the same, so what else is there to say at that point?

Audio 2 are also behind the disgraceful "Specchi riflessi" (with 2 Celentanoesque spoken interludes that are supposed to be funny, but nope); the gloomy and ancient "Io ho te" (only Mina sings), while the rest is entrusted to Paolo Audino, Giulia Fasolino, and there’s even a cover of "Sempre, sempre, sempre" by Gianni Farè, 1976. Comic interludes aside, Celentano throws in 2 of his own songs as well. "Io non volevo" and "Dolly". The first is a shoddy mess beyond any limit, even in bad taste: listening to two sixty-year-olds flirting and talking about hands going to forbidden places is also a bit gross; the second is a typically “celentanesque” rant against men (he even manages to squeeze in a mini-preachy bit against criminal governments and the death penalty) where he exalts the nature of the animal—in this case, a dog—over human nature. He sings by changing his voice: first as the man, then as the dog, and dirty jokes are off limits. The last touch to this picture is a whine, fortunately very short (less than 3 minutes), signed (what a surprise) Massimiliano Pani.

A 45-minute ordeal that, sales aside, I doubt satisfied either Celentano’s or Mina’s fans (even if, in 2017, the two would try again—successfully this time—with "Le migliori": a bit better). There’s also, God deliver us, a Christmas edition.