Fabrizio Moro
Ognuno ha quel che si merita

Important premise: never judge an album by its cover! Especially because the cover of this album is truly appalling; the person who created the artwork should be chastised!

In 2005, I was an awkward teenager approaching music with quite varied listens.
In my small town, in my small bedroom, my mighty player greedily devoured burned Audio CDs with tracks from 883, Manowar, Goo Goo Dolls, Eiffel 65, something by Nirvana and Oasis, all selected in a rather superficial way: I listened to everything my brother had passed onto me on his gigantic 32 GB super-hard drive, a digital storage giant for the time.
Meanwhile, several hundred kilometers away, in Rome, a singer-songwriter with a troubled past was releasing his second album.

Ognuno ha quel che si merita by Fabrizio Moro is an album that brings with it sounds at times hard and harsh and at times full of sweetness, the kind of sweetness remembered and dreamed more than lived.
The 10 tracks have a classic Italian singer-songwriter style, often talking about love and ended loves, but for the first time, one can hear the character of the artist destined to win Sanremo in the Young Artists section a couple of years later: it's the second album, but it sounds as if it were the first.
Fabrizio Moro, released in 2000, had in fact achieved little success despite the singer-songwriter's participation in the 50th edition of the Sanremo Festival. It was an album heavily affected by the artist's substance use during that period and an artistic production that too markedly recalled the sounds of Vasco and Grignani. The album still contained some tracks with personal and decidedly interesting lyrics, compared to the future production.

Fabrizio Moro was long disowned by the singer from San Basilio, who with Ognuno ha quel che si merita sought a new beginning five years later.
The album's sound, the image transmitted by the artist, and the positivity, though hard-won, of the lyrics show us a decidedly changed Fabrizio, who overcame a decidedly dark period in his life and started to come to terms with his weaknesses and history, fighting tooth and nail.

The album opens with Eppure pretendevi di essere chiamata amore, already released as a single in 2004, a piece of nostalgic love, yet full of newfound energy and anger finally expressed and no longer repressed, as perceived in the first album.
Banale spiegazione is a crescendo in intensity, where Moro cites two of his passions (soccer and cinema) and demonstrates the breadth of his vocal range, hitting in this track the highest note ever reached in any of his recordings(!).
The title track has a melancholic melody and a "list-style" text, a common feature of other future Moro songs and several famous tracks by other Roman artists like Venditti and Niccolò Fabi; it talks about the author's convictions, citing dreams, hopes, and teachings from his grandmother.
Ci vuole un business is a disco piece from the '70s akin to Renato Zero, previously used also in an Italian Red Cross promotional campaign (with the title and refrain changed to Non basta solo il business).
Lisa is a piece about a disappointment in love with a manipulative girl described by the singer as superficial (because she always watched Amici di Maria, irony of fate).
Non essere arrabbiata is another love song, where the author this time talks about his flaws and difficulties in loving, also linked to his past experiences.
In Everybody the "list-style" song and the disco rhythm return, this time more '80s and funky, where the singer expresses discontent with the contradictions and corruption in Italian "democracy."
L'indiano is a piece about an (alleged) betrayal suffered by Moro, a song that well conveys the idea of the artist's anger, thanks to a cynicism that recalls Colpa d'Alfredo, which was also made famous by the indelicate and politically incorrect way Vasco referred to other characters in the story ("... she went home with the negro, the slut...").
The album closes (in its physical version) with Come..., a song in which Moro asks for forgiveness from his woman, alternating spoken parts with melodic sung parts and "list-style" (as he will do in 2008 with the song Eppure mi hai cambiato la vita, a song proposed with little success at the Sanremo Festival edition of that year). This piece will be one of the opening pieces of his subsequent tours, thanks to a long arpeggiated guitar intro.
A mention also goes to the embryonic version of the track Non importa, a bonus track on the iTunes version of the album; the piece, also "list-style," will be included in a rearranged version on the 2008 album Domani, losing all the anger that is transverse to the entire 2005 album.

In general, I find particularly interesting the use that Moro makes of "list-style" songs for social themes, while for sentimental themes he often prefers a more poetic and classic song form: even Come..., a love song, uses pop culture references in its "list-style" parts.
The "list-style" form has helped several of Moro's pieces become hits, like the more famous Pensa, taken to Sanremo in 2007 with excellent results.

In 2005 Fabrizio Moro was a different artist compared to what he is now: he was emerging, he was angry, and he was seeking a success that, after almost 15 years, he has managed to find, albeit partially disowning some of his past "ways of presenting," primarily the references to Amici di Maria De Filippi.
Moro is one of those artists who has managed to maintain a constant commitment in his musical production, beyond promotional strategies also made of television appearances in low-level shows, and although now he always aimed to be a "pop" artist, he has managed to create his own style and identity, and, with all due proportions, I don't mind comparing his discography path to giants like Bruce Springsteen. Sure, he still has a long way to go, but in a country closed in on itself like Italy, his results are impressive.

In 2005 Moro was 30 years old while I was 14. At 16 I started playing the guitar and at 18 I got to know him.
Since then, my musical tastes have changed a lot, I even stopped listening to him, and from afar, I barely followed him as he accepted a role in the show Amici, a decision that later brought him some notoriety and allowed him to return to the spotlight by winning a Sanremo Festival with Ermal Meta, this time in the Big category.
Since 2005 I have learned much about the music world, I have developed a critical and analytical sense, and I started writing reviews on Debaser to vent my pseudo-journalistic vein. Now I am married, I have a job, I understand well many things Moro sang about in this album, and some I have already overcome, others I am facing now.
Both Moro and I have changed a lot, but I still consider Ognuno ha quel che si merita one of his most genuine works and a record not to be missed.

I am convinced that for now, Fabrizio Moro has had "what he deserves." Will he know how to deserve it again tomorrow?