Jovanotti
Lorenzo 2015cc

I don't know if you've ever noticed (I have) that in Jovanotti's songs, there's a lot of kissing, crazy falling in love, and endless "I love you" declarations, but there's never any mention of sex. The only song where he hinted at the subject of sex was, way back in 1992, "Sai qual'è il problema", which dealt with the theme of AIDS and condom use (every time I hear that song, it reminds me of that trashy line from a trashy Jerry Calà movie: "La squinzia ha imposto il preserva", ah, the '90s). Anyway, listening to this double CD by Jova (whom I actually find quite likable, I promise I'll make up for my sins somehow), the strong and somewhat painful feeling is just this: nothing ever happens. For instance, at one point he sings, "Don’t leave your mouth without kisses tonight." But I say, blessed Jova, at almost 50 years old (which he was when this album came out in 2015) dare a little more, why not go for something like: "Don’t leave your mouth without dick tonight." No one would be scandalized. Or would they? Maybe his fanbase would, because after all he’s the parish rapper, the one who said if you did drugs you were an idiot, the clean and youthful party advocate, from the Church to San Patrignano to the Vatican, Sunday morning pastries, lunch with the parents, and the most Christian Democrat version of Italian small-town life. He is someone who believes in God and used to rap, and that’s already a contradiction; evidently, God got angry, and he turned to a more "fluffy" pop, becoming almost like a sycophantic Renzi supporter. He was born American, turned anti-American; born as a jokester (and he excelled at that) and ended up a poet for the left-wing Veltronian side. My goodness.

"Lorenzo 2015" is a double album; our man can’t hold back. Jova, as usual, hands us a package, and the first CD, stuffed with singles and various hits ("Gli immortali"; "L'estate addosso"; "Pieno di vita"; "Il cielo immenso"; "Sabato") is the worst, where love is just chaste pecks and hardly any passionate tongue action, and the ballads are a mix of sugar and more sugar. Take "Le storie vere", few know it, listen to it, and then tell me: it’s a ballad that seemed old thirty years ago, with the usual rhymes from a '90s diary, a mischievous sax, and nothing more, but think of "Ragazza magica", where he says "my girl turns an afternoon into a masterpiece" (wow!) and read the lyrics, does it seem to you that an adult, sentient (oh well) man could write a line as cringeworthy as: "And you send the cats on the roofs to stay out at night, which when it's day, they seem lazy to you but it's just tiredness from all the excitement of love nights like little tigers"? And the horror (the horror!) of songs like "Caravan Story" or the half mandolin of "Perché tu ci sei". There’s something only when he decides to focus on rhythm and not on cheap sentimentalism, "Tutto acceso" and "Musica" are two good examples. The rest is fluff, including a track about an astronaut lost in space wanting to return to her (to do what? He wouldn't have sex anyway, we know that, see above) and the usual whining dedicated to his now-grown daughter, "Libera" (although, in all seriousness, his daughter did fall seriously ill in the meantime, she's recovered now, and that’s not to be joked about).

The second CD, however, is a bomb, or almost. It's what Jova, rather unwisely, didn't promote. It's shorter, much shorter, with 12 tracks, and if you exclude the last one, "7 milioni", a little flop, it’s an album that brings our guy back to the levels we know.

(and here I have to speak well about the album)

Already the opening track, "Melagioco", is a frantic electronic song, and electronics will be the leitmotif of the entire second part, which would make even my grandmother jump out of her chair (and my grandmother is dead). It's worth noting that the lyrics are really good, with some passages that entertain and leave you a bit (just a bit, but that's already a lot) stunned ("I tried to make sense by listening to thousands of opinions, but I've realized that not even the experts can make predictions" and the passage, dear to me, "The city where you'd want to live you won't find on the map"). But there are also beautiful tracks like "E non hai visto ancora niente" or "Una scintilla", the latter with an unusually dark atmosphere. "All the people" with Sinkane is a club track for the Mediterranean, but the work Bombino does in the remarkable "Si alza il vento" could be among the most beautiful things Jova has ever sung (even this has something dark, was he feeling the weight of the years?). The experiment of "Gravity", although somewhat cumbersome, is the germ of a Jovanottian transformation (?), but given our guy’s subsequent works, it seems more like a half-miracle incident. "Il riparo" merges tradition and electronics, but it does so with a certain compositional robustness. If Jova had released only this CD, it would have been a significant artistic moment for him, but instead, since he wanted to overdo it, he got lost with the 18 songs of the first CD, boring, predictable, and too trendy.

In the meantime, Jova continues to sing his love songs where there’s a lot of kissing and great love (a lot of it), but, dear Cherubini, a little romp once in a while, no?

(in fact, my wife, a rocker at heart, doesn’t like Jova, there must be a reason)