Francesco Gabbani
Viceversa

We last saw him with his "Magellano" and the victory at Sanremo 2017 with the "sophisticated" hit "Occidentali's Karma". I mentioned back then that the album represented a pleasant half hour spent with catchy tunes and refined references, but it didn't showcase his maturity, if it would ever arrive.

Well, with these premises, three years later FG presents his "Viceversa", preceded by the summer single "È un'altra cosa".

Unfortunately, I have to note that the title of the launch single does not correspond to the 2020 album compared to that of 2017, of which it is essentially a carbon copy: 9 songs as in the previous one, with an even shorter duration, 28 and a half minutes against the 30 of "Magellano". Is it the modus operandi? The same. 9 easy-peasy tunes with lyrics also containing pseudo-intellectual references to capture the listener's attention.

It begins with "Einstein", where the concept of relativity is applied to our lives and relationships; then "Il sudore ci appiccica" follows, where Francesco talks again about connection and human relationships with wordplay like "appiccica, accipicchia"; the Sanremo track "Viceversa" arrives, which is perhaps the best of the whole handful of tracks. Indeed, if FG hadn't won Sanremo three years earlier, I'm sure he would have won this year; to me, his song is better than Diodato's... the chorus is well constructed and Francesco sends a strong message when he says: “Everything we lack and that we look for to be able to tell you that I love you!” That is, in times of social and employment precariousness, there is an economy and a renunciation also of feelings. We continue with "Cinesi", which has no reference to the Coronavirus as one might think, but rather in the song it says "you who are the most beautiful and don't believe it, with the dress bought from the Chinese", thus giving no importance to clothing and fashion in a world where "old trends pretend to be new"; "Shambola", not to be confused with "Shambhala", the mythical kingdom of Tibetan Buddhism, speaks instead through Adam and Eve of the necessary balances to carry on a couple's discourse; "Duemiladiciannove", also released as a single, is a series of wordplay and current references with some allusions to the social system, but frankly, it doesn't excite me; "È un'altra cosa", in the end, turns out to be one of the best on the album along with "Viceversa", despite being a sort of "number two" compared to "Tra le granite e le granate" and "Pachidermi e pappagalli"... The penultimate piece is the oxymoron "Bomba pacifista"... yes, after the grenades, the "bomb"... the track suggests transforming one's weaknesses into strengths, into "pacifist bombs" indeed; the album closes with "Cancellami", where the partner is asked to erase him, not to forget him, but to avoid painful memories. The lyrics are the sparsest in the album and focus mainly on the chorus.

Compared to the previous work, the melancholic vein is missing, as in "La mia versione dei ricordi", while on the quantity side, the 9 pieces are all his and there is no cover, like "Susanna" in "Magellano".

Moral of the story: this album also deserves 2 stars, in the sense that it is not an "indecent (musical) proposal", it is not trash, but it does not have the substance to earn three stars. In short, the record labels froze FG for two years only to put him back on the market with the same "toy" with which he had "broken through" three years earlier.

I believe at this point that Gabbani, in order not to lose credibility, should wait another three years and present a product different from the previous two, perhaps closer to "Eternamente ora". Otherwise, he risks becoming immediately repetitive and playing all his cards too soon.