Gianna Nannini
Puzzle

THE REVIEW

"Puzzle", Gianna Nannini's sixth album, was the second best-selling record in Italy in 1984, after Vasco Rossi's "Va bene, va bene così", thanks to the famous (almost infamous) single "Fotoromanza". Additionally, this could be defined as the best work (to date) in the singer's thirty-year career, in my opinion unsurpassed in the search for catchy melodies then "tainted" with less radio-friendly arrangements.

The album opens with "Kolossal", where Nannini imagines herself in an Italian Bronx, all beer and "rap dialogues", without, however, the free spirit and desire to react of a "negro". The second track is the already mentioned "Fotoromanza", a simple song in musical terms, which owes its success to its compelling rhythm and an immediate, deliberately naive and melodramatic lyric (after all, the title itself is highly ironic). "L'urlo" is the most challenging song on the record, built almost entirely on drums and a nice bass line, while Nannini sings her anguish with a dragging and dark voice.
The fourth track, "Siamo ricchi" is as pleasant as it is forgettable, as is "Fiesta", an incursion into "Spanish-sounding" territory that isn't entirely successful. Between the two tracks just mentioned is "set" one of the jewels of the album, "Ciao": the track opens with a distorted electronic voice over a soft organ background, and then transforms into a high-level electro-pop ride, where, once again, the lyrics take a backseat to the excellent and excellently arranged musical part.
And finally, we come to what I consider the best song in the entire Nannini production, "Ballami" (an eloquent title), an unusual catchy dance track arranged with originality (including oriental instruments) in which the singer-songwriter ranges from the atomic bomb on Nagasaki ("Japanese dawns over my city, sleep Nagasaki under the smoke of civilization") to "distorted dreams under the ocean floor".
The concluding track, "Se vai via", is a classic rock song in Nannini's now proverbial style: distorted electric guitars in abundance and, in the foreground, a hoarse voice shouting its reasons (in this case against a man with "an idiotic grin"), without ever, however, giving up the all-Italian melodic taste... and this, as musically Anglophile as it may be, I consider a great advantage.