Enzo Carella
Barbara E Altri Carella

Is there life in pop music? Or rather, has there been life in pop music? In these current times, when we talk about pop music, everyone thinks of songs and artists scattered all over the world: pop is everywhere now, there's no denying it, even in genres that have very little to do with pop; even just a small hint can make any piece a pop piece. Trap is pop in its entirety, why? We will see this in the end. Meanwhile, let's return to the initial question: Has there been life in pop music? The answer is yes, look at that. And the most pop form of life that has ever existed in Italy is Enzo Carella.

It all began one evening, perhaps someone was there too, everyone was glued to the television watching Sanremo and found themselves with a contestant as the opener of the edition, a guy with a "freak" and over-the-top aesthetic, surrounded by dancers with placards. And there begins the magic, the whirlwind of pure dance and passion of Barbara, a force of nature that hits the audience, leaving them stunned, enriching one of the worst editions of Sanremo ever. Enzo emerged from this experience better than before, gaining a second place in the overall ranking and decent sales success of the 45 record of Barbara. And that much-sold 45 hides an interesting piece on the B-side: Veleno is a tough piece, a musical base that almost seems to anticipate various MIDI files and lyrics full of passion but unexpectedly calm. It's hard to say, but Veleno is a pop piece. Light as a leaf but immensely complicated.

After that, the album came out, Barbara and other Carella, and there the situation complicates further: textual complexity mixes with musical lightness, embedding pearls as an expert jeweler would do. A piece like Foto, for example, amazes, why all this amazement? Because we find ourselves in front of a piece that seems light and catchy, with that photo on the dresser testifying to a love now distant; yet inside you, you understand that that piece is more complex than it seems, those electric guitar parts so catchy, that very simple chorus "e ancora la vorrei, farei, non so" that hides much more than it is really saying.

In confusion, you move to the next track, Amara: it doesn't seem like a pop piece, it's too harsh to be, and those lyrics make so many incomprehensible turns that make you think that the piece actually means nothing; but then you realize you have listened to a pure blend of Eros, of passion, treated as if it were a ritual between honey mixed with wax and a woman turned into a pyre. And you don't realize, you can't believe that this piece can be cataloged as pop because it is so explicit and brazen. Then you understand that the path is now set, as the subsequent Malamore testifies, a real musical explosion where love becomes obsessive and cruel, an eternal betrayal of the partner and oneself.

From the darkness, a light: a gulf left to itself, a girl left alone, this is Carmè. Take all previous pieces, identify the key features you noticed in the pieces, that is, lightness hiding a more complex meaning, and imagine them to the nth degree; here you get the hardest piece of the album disguised as even more attractive and catchy pop lightness. And you can't take it, you don't understand how these pieces can be defined as pop, yet they are. The doubts multiply further when you reach Parigi, restless and unsettling, acoustic and slow, but it gets into your head tremendously, and you can't accept it, you can't accept that this music can be pop. In a flash, you reach the last tracks and come to Oh rai!, an instrumental that concludes the album on a funk rhythm. You arrive at the end with a big unresolved question: what is it that I heard?

Coming back to the point, why can genres like trap be cataloged as pop? Because they have elements that appeal to the masses, pop, as you know, is short for Popular, that is, popular. In fact, trap today is the most trendy genre precisely because it has pop elements. Enzo Carella, on the other hand, has written songs cataloged as pop but which in themselves have absolutely nothing that might lead one to think of pop. Yet they are. Inexplicably. Enzo Carella, therefore, by never theoretically approaching the concepts of pop, managed to be the most pop artist in Italy. For now and forever.