Lucio Battisti
Don Giovanni

To the delight of many, I've revised my first review. I hope it is "readable" now.

Year 1986.

After a full three and a half years following the last album "E già," a turning point record both in terms of sound and lyrics (the latter written by his wife Grazia Letizia Veronese, known artistically as Velezia), published after the end of the partnership with lyricist Giulio Rapetti, known as Mogol, the "so-called" singer-songwriter Lucio Battisti, also known as the Reatino singer and composer - who became famous during the late '60s and throughout the '70s with various successful singles and albums, including "Il Mio Canto Libero" and "Una Donna Per Amico" - finally releases a new work, destined to change the fate of Italian pop from those years onwards. Upon the release of the record, there are two schools of thought:
1) those who think that Battisti became conceited after the end of his partnership with Mogol - so much so that the singer himself had previously sent some "barbs" toward the latter in the album "E già," the best example being in the track "Mistero" - not accepting this breath of fresh air, full of synth-pop and new wave coupled with hermetic lyrics that evoke an artist who was then at the peak of his success, namely the Riposto-born Franco Battiato.
2) those who think that Battisti's music is excellent - Francesco De Gregori was mad about it at first listen - that the lyrics by new lyricist and poet Pasquale Panella are effective, and that the album is pure avant-garde. An album which, together with the other four famous "white albums" to follow, will only be understood twenty/thirty years after its release.

What follows is my opinion.

Is the album avant-garde? Yes. Do fans still recognize it as such? Not all of them. Are there still those who repudiate it? Certainly. So: why is this part of Battisti's discography, the one with Panella as a lyricist, never mentioned on the news when talking about Battisti? Why is there no mention of tracks like "Le Cose Che Pensano" or the titular "Don Giovanni"? Probably the album was and still is subjected to a media blackout - despite the fortunate 250,000 copies sold - especially for superficiality, because Battisti fans of "Un'Avventura" don't like exploring new boundaries. Or perhaps many believed that Battisti was musically dead in 1980 with "Una Giornata Uggiosa," the last album of the Mogol period, and therefore they immediately gave up.

I shall, therefore, list each song point by point.

1. "Le Cose Che Pensano." The album intro is accompanied by both "nascent" synthesizers and a piercing piano. Followed by a typical '80s drum, producing a recognizable sound: the atmosphere is romantic, even though Battisti's voice and the lyrics refer to the pain felt for the lost love, for a love that draws from the name of a stranger - "how are you, did you forget / did you fade away and how is she / the stranger, how is she" - and will be remembered in the only place worthy of memories, the mind. Battisti's voice is an echo of the past Battisti with the particular novelty of a different voice: indeed, from album to album, the singer’s voice will become increasingly monotonous, robotic, inhuman, virtual. His voice marries a climate full of vivacity and, at the same time, melancholy, worthy of a masterful closure, with an R&B choir very present in the album and a slight suspense at the end. Panella presents us with lyrics full of references to the distant past, a method that takes different forms in the upcoming tracks.
2. "Fatti Un Pianto." Follows the poignant opener, an energetically charged track, as if it's a track of emotional recovery. In this song, Panella associates the art of cooking with love, deconstructing and reconstructing the theme of love from scratch, highlighting allusive details: "from a kilo of emotions an ounce of jam / if you beat a farewell / an omelette comes out / golden thighs need frying / with smiles make croquettes." Battisti personifies the track by characterizing it with a pop-rock style, always associated with synth-pop as well as horns, a good example being the two notable sax solos within the track. A particular note: the track seems to have some resemblance to another song by Audio 2 - a duo whose singer's voice was very similar to Battisti's - that is, "Sono Le Venti," in 1995.
3. "Il Doppio Del Gioco." A notable bass groove introduces the track. Panella's lyrics take on their characteristic acrobatics in the form of wordplay and puns: "they are slow tributaries / their cries pouring / they are crawling diamonds that silence broke." Note how some verses take on a musicality worthy of the best decadentist lyrics, with sound effects attached to each other. Battisti's choirs are present and seem to express recurring Panellian metaphors, which end the song with echoes repeating the affixed verses.
4. "Madre Pennuta." This is surely one of the best songs Battisti has ever composed. A mix of synth-pop, new wave, avant-pop, and experimental music; all these musical genres in one song. Every instrument is relevant: from the enormity of the drums - which is a drum machine, remember - to the power of the synthesizers, right up to the strings that seem to bring Battisti to an alternative universe: it's as if the singer himself is debuting again with a new song style, without minding that some of the songs in the album have a structure different from the song form - something that will be more evident from the following album, "L'Apparenza" - and it's as if the light music, combined with pure avant-garde, is making him express his best. Battisti is joyful, and this is certain: moreover, it's frightening how completely unrecognizable his voice is in this song. Shall we talk about the magnificence of the lyrics? Pure hermeticism. Sounds and daily life images like "a truck retiring" or "the sun at its nadir" cross the singer's childhood: "story ended / and empire fallen / of living truthfully / here I am at three years." The parallel with the decline of the Second World War and Battisti's years is evident. And yet, if we must be very technical, by the end of the war, Lucio wasn't even two years old: who knows? We only know that the two gave birth to a nuclear song, full of initial tribal rhythms and dominated by a pure electronics that persists throughout the song.
5. "Equivoci Amici." Personally, I consider this track one of the most beautiful and also one of the most underrated, not only of the Panella period, but of Battisti's entire repertoire. What is presented to us is a list of ambiguous names, experimenting (by Panella) with wordplay: "one went bonded / one lives on flair / one is disoriented / one has put bridge / and is the trans-itant / one makes the blackberries / one is aging / because he is / a noble scotch." Among this cavalcade of surrealism, the wonderful virtuosity of Battisti mixes, which would make the journalist envious who, in a '69 episode of "Per Voi Giovani," deemed his voice not pleasant. The final synth riff is certainly one of the most beautiful things ever heard on this album and beyond. Furthermore, I consider this track an anti-tormentone: it consists of lively music within its genre alternated with a completely crazy text that reduces, in a moment, its "impact" as a commercial track. Perhaps that's why I consider it special.
6. "Don Giovanni." Now it's the turn of the dreaded title track. A minimal drum rhythm - three kicks and two beats repeated ad infinitum - and an orchestral atmosphere (which make the track two interpretations, namely a reference to Mozart or the figure itself) constitute one of the highest works of Battisti's entire discography and probably one of the best tracks in Italian music. If it had been presented at that year's Sanremo, it would have surely won. Apart from utopias, the lyrics highlight the confrontation with the singer's past as a "fumista," specializing in welcoming the inhaled smoke from Mogol's words, words that did not belong to him but sang for about ten years. These lyrics are the will to be associated with the old Battisti, he who "wears whatever he wants" because loved by everyone, a simple boy who loves music and who is loved, in return, for his productions. However, Battisti has always been a half singer, a fumista who has always had to refer to the one who scattered his smoke, and Panella is the one who gave life to his words, making even more difficult, in understanding, the wills and meanings of the texts. "What an idleness on tour / to never return / in the deafening routine / of light singing / love for real." These are unforgettable phrases, phrases sung by an interpreter who crumples his past, or at least some of the things that characterized him, throwing the image of a light music singer that the media continues to give him even today. The real Battisti is not the one who continually talks about lost love, but the one who, experimenting in the depths of the human being, seeks a melody to associate with a text that, calmly, will then be understood; surely, Battisti continued to speak of love, but in a different way. This is why the white albums exist, and this is why many older fans felt betrayed by this new side of him, the True Face of Lucio Battisti, the "scurvy of the day" who, in his last years of life, did not deign to autograph or photograph with fans because, as Battisti himself said in one of his last radio interviews: "an artist must communicate only through his work. The artist does not exist. His art exists."
7. "Che Vita Ha Fatto." This is the first track that made me fall in love with post-Mogol Lucio. There are initial jazz references that flow, especially during the instrumental part, into an intense orchestral solo that fascinatingly combines the winds and strings with synth-pop, something I've always loved: electronics, music generated by man, "pairs" itself with its initial genre, the mother genre of all genres created by man, the orchestral music which, at the same time, seems to act as classical music. And indeed it is as if Battisti himself becomes a cornerstone of his genre, a Mozart of avant-garde pop. Here too, Panellian wordplay does not lack with a strong use of the distant past: "she loved me, you loved her, I didn't / the verbs betrayed her / what does it have to do with me."
8. "Il Diluvio." Ending the album is a track distinguished from the others by its long introduction, something Battisti will abolish in future albums, though with rare exceptions. Here there is a vivid description of the rain pouring onto the umbrella-makers who "have the fortune" to have umbrellas to shield themselves. The music that describes this scene converts into a sound similar to that of rain, it is as if it transforms. Battisti's voice hints at Battiato, who was trendy at the time, confirming the experimental similarity between the two artists. The track concludes with an astral sound that speaks directly to the listener: the journey full of nuances, begun with a tragic memory, ends with the sound that accompanies our days, the rain. And so "Don Giovanni" concludes, in my opinion, one of the best albums of all time.

As I mentioned in my introduction, "Don Giovanni" puzzled critics, and many fans did not like the album for its impact, even though Battisti's nephew himself, Andrea Barbacane - who has, or had, a YouTube channel where he uploads, or uploaded, videos about his uncle Lucio - admitted "Don Giovanni" is the only truly listenable album of the post-Mogol period, probably because it is the first and only one, along with "E già," that combines Battisti's ongoing experimentation since "Amore E Non Amore" with the voice of a commercially listenable Battisti. And yet no. Indeed, I forgot to share my impression about the arrangements and sound of the album: the former are spatial, from another galaxy, I would say... thinking of "Madre Pennuta," I imagine aliens listening to it. As for the latter, I would like to express my interpretation. Considering that Panella's lyrics are beyond hermeticism, probably, I repeat it is my opinion, Battisti wanted to render everything deliberately incomprehensible. The track that led me to this thesis is "Fatti un pianto," where the final verses are almost cryptic because the arrangements overshadow Battisti's singing. Some have even hypothesized that Battisti's diction was not suited to sustain such texts, but in my opinion, it is an intended effect, also because the same thing will happen in subsequent albums, though in different guises. Consider "Così Gli Dei Sarebbero" from the album "CSAR," perhaps the most challenging track of the post-Mogol period that, despite everything, remains indecipherable even while listening carefully to the music and the text. Maybe, however, I'm comparing two different albums, because while "Don Giovanni" is the beginning of a new phase in Battisti's life - let's consider it a rebirth - "CSAR" is a very dark part, those you have to pummel day and night to understand their intentions.

My advice is to listen to the album repeatedly, but not just "Don Giovanni" but indeed all the white albums, underrated albums because considered incomprehensible or "different" from the discography with Mogol. But don't misunderstand: I also like Mogol's lyrics, but obviously, I prefer Panella's. Needless to say, the genius among the three is Lucio, because it's known.