Lucio Battisti
Cosa succederà alla ragazza

Year 1992.
After the success of "La Sposa Occidentale" - the third album with lyrics by Pasquale Panella - an album released in 1990, considered as "the most commercial" due to the almost 400,000 sales, a reason attributed to the catchiness of the title track periodically played on the radio, Battisti and Panella - now notoriously (ironically) known to the Mogol fans as "the end of Battisti", decide to compose an undoubtedly unrepeatable work, namely "CSAR" acronym for "Cosa Succederà Alla Ragazza". The album - which sold around 100,000 copies - is considered as a concept and tells the story of a day in the life of a girl who is continuously mentioned within the eight songs of the record.

So let's see the start of the girl's day, directly from side A - forgive me, I'm used to it, owning a turntable: a gruesome beginning. Indeed, in the first track "Cosa Succederà Alla Ragazza", there is a reference to a ritual that features, precisely, the poor girl who, upon waking up in the description of the dawn, the beard, the curve of the shaved throat which are hems of a skirt, seems to want to witness the presentation of a potential murderer intending to subdue the girl's body that they wanted to cover with chocolate. In this apocalyptic scenario, we notice a critique from the mass media, accused of instrumentalizing affairs for their own selfish purposes - "so remember to take some photos, photographs that can always come in handy" - dying, however, in that aura of hypocrisy that characterizes and at the same time disheartens them - "and let's not talk about it anymore". In this context, we consider the importance of the acronym "CSAR", as depicted on the album cover: indeed, it refers to the CAESAR, a political affiliation - similar to Freemasonry - where rituals were performed by government forces (it is no coincidence that CSAR resembles ZAR).
Battisti describes the complex narrative of a very active Panella with arrangements at the edge of electronics - we are within the realm of techno - almost avant-garde, highlighted by the bass line that repeats endlessly and gives a psychedelic touch to the song, which will often be found within the album. As if wanting to say that in every song the instrument varies but in each of them the psychedelic aspect remains intact. Two other noteworthy elements within the song are obviously the synthesizers and Battisti's singing: since the times of "La Sposa Occidentale", in fact, the artist had abandoned classical instruments (string, strings, wind) to rely on the synthesizer, demonstrating a very high potential. At the same time, the "robotic", almost apathetic singing of the singer makes everything even more spectral, leading to consider this track as one of the most gothic in Battisti's repertoire.

The psychedelic noise of the first track breaks off, thus giving life to the ambiguous second track "Tutte Le Pompe": it feels like being in a typically Fellinian setting, cultivated by surreal references and rich with double entendres and word play. The girl finds herself inside a bar where she willingly talks to a friend about the so-and-so, the so-and-so, Tizio Caio, described as the boy she would like to meet but at the same time doesn't want to because she is torn by the feelings that both have for themselves; in short, they have never really met. Meanwhile, in a building near the bar, there is the suicide of a lady who sets herself on fire just for fun, whose love, now non-existent, gets disrupted by cupids, the naked-bottomed shooters, who laugh it off and decide to ridicule, along with the slippage of relationships, her husband with a tongue-colored tie, a Mr. Nobody. The suicide, however, erupts into a fire that brings some firefighters to bring out all the pumps with water in their veins (by many interpreted as a vulgarly sexual act). The crowd panics at the bar, yet in no time the firefighters restore normalcy and everything bursts into a toast. The Tizio Caio mentioned by the girl is glimpsed on the streets and she, naively, declares her love: he admits a "you could have said it before" and everything ends with a happy ending like "I would really like to see you, really like to see you".
Here Battisti softens - but not much - by inserting gospel choirs that suggest, by the artist himself or by Panella, an unlikely comparison with the church, something hypothesizable in the previous track but also in the upcoming ones.

Indeed, in "Ecco I Negozi", the third track of the record, we notice various biblical and religious references: Panella places the girl in a context that vaguely refers to the track "Il Diluvio" - present in the album "Don Giovanni" - where every element of the rain becomes a source of life for an ironic description of it. The girl finds herself hanging on an unexpected thread of melancholy, a melancholy that looms in her heart: "so you're lucky, you've found the most exclusive place in history" read the verses of the song. An oily song of desire that lets Battisti's ears glimpse a rap-like singing at the beginning and end that seems to pay homage and at the same time mock the budding fashion of the era - at least in Italy. "The images where Antonio and Cleopatra still wrestle like sea lions": it is in these historical references that the girl shines with dreamlike reflections of all that surrounds her. A well-being that she must discover on her own: love.

But after the oppression of various texts beyond hermeticism, we find ourselves in front of what Battisti would call a "little song": surrounded by dub, techno, and electro elements, "La Metro Eccetera" is the summary of Panella's aesthetics. Within the song, we find ourselves before the girl who, in a subway full of people who do trigonometry in the windows corresponding to Alexander's eyes, or better yet, who stares fixedly at a fusion in the glass (referring to the girl), seizes the moment to view the monotony of life, unusual for a Panella text, considering that he is a born experimenter, on par with his colleague Battisti, who, in the simplicity of the pompous base's rhythm, decides to insert elements that differentiate the song itself from a potential radio hit. The first example that comes to mind is "Potrebbe Essere Sera", directly from "La Sposa Occidentale".

With "I Sacchi Della Posta" - the fifth track of the record - we are slowly approaching Battisti's masterpiece: side B - here we go again. The girl, now divine for her protagonism, is introduced with the excuse that shoes are the precise expression of the face, as if to deduce that from them one can recognize the emotion perceived by an individual. She strolls slowly but suddenly realizes she is just in time for the sung mass and hence starts a run for which she misses a train that should lead her to a special event. Shortly after, she remembers to pass by a tailor without a left sleeve, by the cabinetmaker, encountering the daily stress, then passing through the minuets in the moments, the instants.
Battisti literally envisions each step of the song, capturing a perfect picture of routine life, caused by mental discomforts and visions that make life seem like a real hell: all this is understood from the resizing of the conception of music within the song itself, where everything darkens even more than in the title track. Furthermore, the song's chords hearken to two songs: the recent "Tu Non Ti Pungi Più", but especially the colossal "Io Vivrò (Senza Te)", for which Battisti himself decided to give a slight touch to the arrangements.

The masterpiece of masterpieces is reached in "Però Il Rinoceronte". Here we are: this is the apotheosis of Battisti's repertoire, the best song ever conceived by the artist. In the sixth track of the record, Battisti delights us with a blend of avant-pop and synth pop, with a few grams of techno, but just a little. The girl here is the protagonist of the total achievement: falling in love. Love is considered a crazy gesture similar to breaking a nut with the chin above the heart: in Panella's description, man is an animal who, through the change in his slowness, describes the passage to falling in love with another individual. And, like a circus artist demonstrates his skill in his craft, Panella manages to best describe this act, reaching heights that perhaps will never be reached again. Therefore, the rhinoceros - a ponderous animal taken into consideration - has the handbrake and in its slowness shows itself capable of truly loving compared to the apparently stronger flesh which if not cooked slowly remains raw inside. A work of such beauty also showcases, in its intimacy, Battisti's vocal talents, which will be revisited in such an elusive passage again in the last track published by the artist, "La Voce Del Viso", present in the album "Hegel".

In "Così Gli Dei Sarebbero", the seventh track of the record, Panella reveals himself as iconoclastic, meaning he destroys an image we universally take on, in this case the normal reading of the texts, already quite enriched in all previous white albums. In this track, the Dadaist discourse of post-modern Battisti takes place: here he, through the enrichments of the verses by Panella and the exaltation of synthesizers and falsettos, describes the madness from the protagonist girl in declaring her love towards merchandise, but above all towards inhumanity. Such references are found in verses like "and she got a crush on bitumen, coal with composed hydrogen" or in "what's there to do, she would like to take it tonight where stola, an annular agreement, an entire row at the post office or the Amalfi coast". Epic and at the same time alien the verse "so like a child, missing the s, she said "nettuno nettuno", so the gods would be an intimate defect of pronunciation".

The finale describes the girl as sitting in the middle of the bed: indeed here she promises what she won't do anymore, "Cosa Farà Di Nuovo"

. With the last track with a dub rhythm and funk influences, so much so that suddenly Battisti performs a completely hip hop verse, the girl wakes up at 03:45 in the night both because the sleep has suddenly gone and because the murmur of her chubby cheeks stops. The desire to do something passes through her mind, reflecting on any gesture performed in the previous tracks, or rather, stories. The song itself is the perfect depiction of lightness, a lightness due to a long wait. In my opinion, a Fine Ending.

In conclusion, "CSAR" is an album that is stratospheric, spatial, universal, metaphorical, Felliniesque, erotic, sensational. Probably the best white album both for the extravagance of the lyrics, brought to the edge of nonsense which - deep down - indeed builds sense, and for the crazy music with funk, dub, electro, avant-pop, synth pop influences of a Battisti who cheerfully greets his past, accompanied by the companion "Don Giovanni" who, previously, had publicly rejected him.

No wars, eh. I like both collaborations. Peace!