Giuni Russo
Giuni

Sometimes this happens to me: I listen to an album for the first time that I absolutely love, and after a handful of minutes, I find my head completely emptied of all complex thoughts, filled with melodies and colors, my eyes shining, and an ecstatic and amazed smile plastered on my face, like that of a newborn discovering the world around them. It's a sensation I've been fortunate enough to experience quite a few times, and to be honest, it's precisely the search for this mental state that drives me more than anything else to listen to music, to discover new artists. For someone like me who cares little about historiography, even less about mythology, who understands little to nothing about technique and is too lazy to study it, what remains? Emotion, precisely, and this album by Giuni Russo is an inexhaustible cornucopia of it. Ah, Giuni Russo, born in the right place but with the wrong environment and audience through and through. Right place, exactly, there's no point recycling the usual, very sad stereotype that if she had been born elsewhere she would have been more famous, sold more, etc.: Giuni was an Italian artist and this is a reason for healthy pride, I say this as an equal measure anti-nationalist and anti-anti-nationalist, beyond this, it's obvious that the beauty of her music also lies in her distinctly Italian character, not just in the language but also in the stylistic and musical influences. Eclectic, cultured, modern, open, with broad horizons but with a profoundly Mediterranean soul that characterizes her more than anything else.

Talking about this album starting with "Alghero" might seem like the easiest, almost obvious approach, yet I can't find a better one: someone might remember her second (and last) big hit as a summer anthem, perhaps a bit dated and overplayed too, yet it remains a splendid song, perfect as the introduction to this record. Yes, because "Giuni" is rhythm, color, joy, and vitality, and "Alghero" is the epitome of all these elements, expressed in a simple, carefree, and catchy form. A warm summer night by the sea, wild rides on chrome motorcycles; it's her way of breaking the ice, of creating a simple connection based on sensations of pleasure and fun, the ideal prelude to then explore more deeply, to get to know each other better. As proof of the importance of "Alghero", in this album there's even a song that's almost a reflection, a hidden half: "Con te", the subject is still the same, the dream of a summer night, precious moments spent with a soulmate, but reworked in a more intimate and personal key. The result is a love song with an overwhelming and crystal-clear melodic progression, a vivid joy just slightly tinged with a subtle touch of melancholy.

The leitmotif that recurs more insistently, however, is a subtle and flirtatious irony towards the quirks of fashion and, more generally, towards the obsessive cult of external image, which translates into colorful, witty, and deliberately kitsch songs among which the concluding "Illusione" stands out in particular, a small masterpiece just two minutes long, an Italian melody with a '60s vibe contaminated with electronic sounds and Arabic harmonies, while "Occhiali colorati" and "Glamour" wisely pick up synth-pop sounds with a fresh, lively, and fun approach that doesn't feel the weight of the years at all. Remaining in the realm of Italian pop with an international soul, with "Piove piove" Giuni demonstrates her ability to strike with incisive guitars and a gritty yet always elegant singing, almost à la Grace Jones, while "Sogno d'oriente" boasts a sinuous and hypnotic new wave melody with ethnic and lyrical contamination, splendidly matched to a visionary text full of exotisms and suggestions in perfect Battiato style.

The absolute pinnacle of the album, a pearl among pearls, remains "I ragazzi del sole", poetic, atmospheric, sensual, evocative imagery, goosebump-inducing voice: simply perfection, a shining example of the immense potential of "Italian" pop, a potential that Giuni Russo and Maria Antonietta Sisini have fully exploited with class, personality, and passion. For those who continue obsessively searching for Beauty in a broad sense even after having found it over and over again, for open souls never sated by charm, suggestions, and poetry, this is a must-see stop, a pause to admire a colorful and cosmopolitan panorama, yet still pure and natural.