Antonello Venditti
Venditti e segreti

THE REVIEW

1986. Two years after "Cuore," the second chapter of Antonello Venditti's sentimental quartet, he was already on his new path. An album that partly reprises the previous one but still manages to be original and spontaneous. The strength and weakness of this record is that it doesn't have a "super strong" song, not even the almost title track. But let's proceed in order. "Peppino" is a sweet melody about a father's love for his son, which Antonello dedicated to Francesco Saverio, as he stated in an interview. Simple lyrics, a melody that fits well with the text, although one can already glimpse the lack, especially in the sentimental songs, of variations in vocabulary. "Questa insostenibile leggerezza dell'essere" clearly references Milan Kundera's novel, published two years earlier, to discuss the world of the '80s, where aesthetics seem to have triumphed over ethics, and the ending "you're falling in love" means that emotions have prevailed over the political commitment of the previous decade. "Giulio Cesare" is the "Compagno di scuola" of the new decade, well-crafted in music and lyrics, here still varied and rich in historical references, obviously the World Cup and Young Italy. When you listen to it, the high school years flash before your eyes... willing or unwillingly. Side A closes with the beautiful "Esterina," a song about a Palestinian woman integrating into Italy, and "Paolo, amico" refers to Pope John Paul II. Venditti returns to the subject of religion after episodes like "A Cristo." Notable is Marco Rinalduzzi's solo at the end, as convincing as the solo in "Non è la cocaina," which occupies the same fourth position on the "Cuore" album. Turning over the record, we find the almost title track, which I consider the weakest among Our Guy's sentimental songs, although a good song, more cheerful and upbeat than the others. Venditti alludes to a little devil in the heart of both his and his beloved, showing he's still able to construct significant rhetorical scenarios. "Rocky, Rambo e Sting" is a fun episode that reviews three of the myths spanning the seventies and eighties. Each stanza describes a character, worth mentioning is the line about Sting "leaving the police alone," a clear reference to Gordon Matthew Summer's departure from the Police. "Settembre" is a sweet ballad where Enzo Avitabile's sax plays its decisive role, alluding to the seasons and the weather, recurring themes in "Vento selvaggio" and "Piove su Roma," for instance. The album closes with "C'è un cuore che batte nel cuore," the song about Rome from this album, moving and describing the anger of the neighborhood people, of ordinary people.

"Venditti e segreti" will have huge commercial success (the second best-selling album in Italy in 1986, just below Madonna's "True Blue" and above(!) "Don Giovanni" by Lucio Battisti, an album of quite different artistic depth), and Venditti seems to achieve it once again with spontaneity, with each song having a different atmosphere, perhaps only "Peppino" and "Settembre" seem similar. Even though "Cuore" had something more, which is why we can consider Venditti's 1986 work as a transitional episode between the "debut in sentimentality" of 1984, where there was still great inventiveness ("Notte prima degli esami" above all) and the "scheming sentimentality" that would open with "In questo mondo di ladri," where Our Guy's poetics would begin to show the drainage of the key words of his lyrics. Also noteworthy on this album is the presence of Carlo Verdone on drums on track 6. The cover photo is deep and introspective, surely doing justice to one of the "medium" works of the Roman singer-songwriter.