Antonello Venditti
Che fantastica storia è la vita

An irritating album right from the title. It may be true that life is a fantastic story, but there's no need to point it out to an audience who in most cases struggles with a myriad of problems and for whom life is quite hard.
Sure, we should be used to it by now, but it's incredible to think that this bland songwriter is the same author of “Lilly” and “Compagno di scuola”.
We already knew that musically there wasn't much to expect, it's been 15 years now that Venditti's records have been musical photocopies, where Antonello only pays attention to changing the lyrics without really making an effort to build significant stories on top of them, but here he's truly crossed the line.

Where the only track with lyrics worth mentioning is “Lacrime di pioggia”, dedicated to his recently deceased father (as for the music, it's better to gloss over), it's necessary to dwell on the song that, more than any other, has rightly attracted the scorn and laughter of the music critics, at least those not subservient to the power of the majors: the title track. “Mi chiamo Antonio e faccio il cantautore” (who is he referring to?), “Mi chiamo Laura e sono laureata”, and here someone shouted “poetic miracle” (!!!), “Mi chiamano Gesù e faccio il pescatore” (wow), “Mi chiamo Aisha come una canzone / Sono la quarta di tremila persone” (???).
Let's leave the other songs aside.

A singer-songwriter who wrote “Le cose della vita”, “Notte prima degli esami”, “Lilly”, "Canzone per Seveso” and MANY other great pieces of Italian songwriting in the '70s and for much of the '80s, that reduces himself to writing lyrics that resemble elementary school musings, mainly makes you think two things: either he has long conformed to the rules of the music business (which I think is more probable), or his artistic vein has vanished a long time ago, and in that case, a dignified silence would be better.

Oh right, the collaboration with Francesco De Gregori: the most tasteless song of the album, “Io e mio fratello”. Another disappointment to see a songwriter I love so much like Francesco waste himself in this utterly dull ditty.

It's exceedingly annoying, his continuous way of presenting himself as “everyone’s friend,” the one who always gives good advice and makes himself stand out as, in a world of crafty people, he's one of the few to be trusted (undoubtedly this might be true, but then why the continuous photocopy albums?).
A piece of advice: should you ever get the idea to buy this album, do one thing: go retrieve any of the last 5 albums by the national Antonello, write any lyrics yourself, and sing over them. The result would surely be superior to this useless jumble of words and sounds, in too many cases headless and tailless.