Francesco Renga
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THE REVIEW

Once upon a time, there was Francesco Renga.
Now he’s no longer here; in his place is a jumble of sugary sounds and stupid lyrics in the style of "sun-heart-love." There's a character who appears more comfortable in tabloids thanks to an ex-television starlet partner than in front of a microphone. Once there was a voice that vibrated the strings of the soul, now annihilated by sequences of soporific and often useless notes. Once there was the anger of "Alba," now there's the idiocy of "fortune, I've realized now that the moon cannot be grasped."

What else can I say? Forget about the Renga of Timoria. The birth of his daughter seems to have befuddled him to the point of completely losing the roots of his musical essence. Not a single track on this CD is noteworthy, not a single idea is up to the level of what came before; everything is boredom and banality, sing-songy tunes for whistling in the shower like any ordinary 50 special. Renga's voice is confined in an invisible cage that dampens its notable power; it tricks us for just a moment with the opening "Come te" (or "Comete"? I've never understood) where, in a moment of clarity, he perhaps remembers what he once was and displays vocal cords on a gradually intensifying melody that is, all things considered, convincing. But it's only the first track, unfortunately; from here on, it's a descent into the abyss. The singles released ("Ci sarai," "Meravigliosa," and "Un'ora in più") are paradoxically the least bad, which says a lot about this work, absolutely inferior in sales even compared to previous works despite the (utterly predictable at this point) victory at Sanremo and the subsequent re-edit with the addition of the triumphant song (and let's face it, that year's Festival was one of the best ever). He was once a great who sang rock with anger, now he pleases grandmothers with that look of a doting father.

What more can we expect from the Italian showbiz that absurdly trivializes and flattens even the little good it has? That Piero Pelù dresses as an altar boy and goes to serve Mass?
Angelo, take care of him... and bring him back to us as he was...