Best artist Italian Song of the eighties secondo DeBaser.

❝ It is not essential to express a definitive judgment on this work; the five stars, as well as the review, are just a necessary act.

❝ Within me live my identical life of microorganisms that do not know they belong to my body... To which body do I belong?

❝ ...and my teacher taught me how difficult it is to find the dawn within the dusk...

❝ Coming to "Paris Milonga," the title would be enough.

❝ And where there is a piano around there is always a crowd making noise, there are eyes looking for each other, there are lips watching each other.

❝ Impossible to make a mistake.

❝ “The album that made a generation of record sellers happy” (Paolo Madeddu)

❝ an atypical, crazy, delirious, sarcastic, mocking, insane, startling, adrenaline-fueled, nervous, angry, in some ways genius album

❝ Sometimes, a song's verse is enough to express what a thousand words of any speech wouldn't be able to.

❝ "... And God was left riding the donkey, the devil is in heaven and made a nest there..."

❝ I believe this is, hands down, De André's most beautiful work and one of the highest in the Italian (and global, since it was also appreciated by a certain David Byrne) songwriting landscape.

❝ this album by Giuni Russo is an inexhaustible cornucopia of it.

❝ Giuni, with her vocal gifts, manages to make this album unique, refined, modern, and impactful, brimming with a classical character and rhythmic structures that stand out along with splendid melodies.

❝

"Nero a Metà" remains a masterpiece from the first to the last note.

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"Bella 'Mbriana" is the evolution of the raw cry for help in "Terra Mia".

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Even in Bastogne, a Neapolitan remains always a Neapolitan.

❝ Call me Mimì for my black eyes and hair, and my dark thoughts

❝ Mimì was an enigma, an exception, a voice out of the chorus in every sense,

❝ Mia Martini thus left us her masterpiece.

❝ I grew up on bread and Guccini, and Guccini has always been there for me (when the aforementioned girl dumped me, when my grandmother died, and so on).

❝ It’s truly a shame, in a time like this of great cultural poverty, more than economic, that a Singer-Songwriter like Francesco Guccini decides to leave the stage, to self-scrap.

❝ “And I don’t know if I’ll have friends to chorus with me or if I’ll only have unfamiliar faces I’ll sing my songs to all of them and at the end of the road I can say that I lived my days.”

❝ “gli amici sai gli amici tante volte mi dicono che sono un piantagrane, che parlo senza un poco di rispetto, che amo più gli oppressi o le puttane”

❝ "The sound of your footsteps is music from the sky, all of a sudden I realize how heavy the waiting is, then I hold you in my arms and look at the world in your eyes and the silent rain that kisses your hair"

❝ This was the best-selling album in Italy in 1980 (then one might say...)

❝ “thought is like the ocean, you can’t block it, you can’t enclose it”

❝ “Enough blood now, can’t you see, we’re not even standing anymore, a bit of mercy”

❝ Imagine words that are important to you, imagine them suspended in mid-air.

❝ "And the course of life walks slowly, the message is in silence, in sobriety"

❝ Park Hotel, released in 1986, is one of Alice’s most beautiful and successful works

❝ “To end with just a few, simple words: one of the highest points of Italian songwriting.”

❝ “The usual dish, but never, really never, cooked so well.”

❝ “This is the album that definitively establishes Ivano Fossati as a first-rate musician.”

❝ “Our life is not construction, jazz”

❝ "'Bufalo Bill' is this cross and delight of mine: well, if I could, I would probably redo it with better attention to sounds and arrangements. I did it that way, bare and essential, to punish myself for having made 'Rimmel,' which had sold too much... crazy stuff!"

❝ "To understand De Gregori, you must not just listen to him; you have to feel him."

❝ "Captain, I did not want to tell you, but there is a white woman in the middle of the sea... so enormous, fresh and dark, that one never tires of looking at her..."

❝ The voice of an old goddess.

❝ In a word, she does Vanoni. And she is always the best, and the only one, to do it so well.

❝ Absolutely a must-listen: for those who can be moved, for those who love or have loved.

❝ The songs of this album are populated by animals, starting with the nursery rhyme - inspired by a Jewish Passover song - that gives the album its title: "Alla fiera dell'est, per due soldi un topolino mio padre comprò".

❝ Angelo Branduardi gifts us this medieval dance of great charm at the start of what is, in my opinion, his best work: released in nineteen seventy-seven by Polydor in its bare cover, “La pulce d’acqua” contained within itself nine sketches, nine glimpses of as many tales.

❝ Concerto represents Angelo Branduardi at his highest power, in a state of grace, and in full musical maturation.

❝ Greasy as never before, the very charming Anna Oxa kept the (Sanremo) world on edge for several long seconds of deep concentration before performing (wonderfully) on the Ariston theater stage.

❝ “But I will not stop. Never. A real guitarist dies. He must die on stage”.

❝ “Italy has forgotten Ivan Graziani as it has many other writers and singers who have given much to the musical landscape of this bittersweetly contrasting country.”

❝ “A guitarist must die on stage, in front of his people.”

❝ La Rettore is first and foremost a singer-songwriter (all or almost all of her lyrics are written by her) and her lyrics address topics of social denunciation and little-discussed taboo topics (at least at the time), making use of many double entendres.

❝ words like ‘Give me a blade to cut your veins, I hurt you less than a kidney transplant’ may not be exactly hit parade material, yet they are on everyone’s lips, and the song is one of the most played on radio and television.

❝ Probably many know it only for the wonderful “Di Notte Specialmente”, brought to Sanremo right in 1994, the year the CD was released...

❝ “Se telefonando” is undoubtedly an absolute masterpiece of universal value not only for its musical part but also for its lyrics

❝ “Mina quasi Jannacci” is the testimony of perhaps the most mature and intense period of Ms. Mazzini’s long career;

❝ ‘Cremona’, an album of striking crystalline brilliance produced in 1996 and in my opinion, the most beautiful album of the decade for this ALL-ROUND SINGER.

❝ An entire work written by Franco Battiato and Giusto Pio for the voice of Milva, or rather a series of songs composed by the two that revolve around the magnetic and strong personality of the panther of Goro.

❝ "If people only want to see things they can understand, they shouldn’t go to the theater; they should go to the bathroom."

❝ What you hear on this album - and perhaps this is the most important thing, the first thing to say - is a performer with no more limits, a singer with a stratospheric command of his technical means.

❝ And I hate you Romans, I hate you all, a nasty gang of sycophants and intriguers, poorly or well disguised, as intellectuals and saints, I hate you Romans all of you.

❝ "Dedicated to John Lennon, sung in room 2 of Abbey Road Studios in London, the favorite room of The Beatles, with the valve microphone used for Strawberry Field. In the string quartet of Fragole infinite, summoned by Sir George Martin, the viola and first violin played in Sgt. Pepper... For me, these are great satisfactions"

❝ I consider the artist in question to be the greatest Italian singer, obviously after the sacred trinity of De Andrè-Battisti-Battiato.

❝ The final feeling is that Ruggeri wants to pay tribute to himself, almost a tribute: I'd like to remind that of many songs he is only the lyricist, do we know what the composer thinks?

❝ Sooner or later, all killers return to the scene of the crime.

❝ Twenty-five songs, for about two hours of music, deliver us an interpreter worthy of being counted among the best currently circulating in the peninsula.

❝ The umpteenth choice in the name of poor taste that characterizes this latest descending trail of a pseudo-artist adrift.

❝ The red-haired Fiorella does not succeed in her attempt to create a Brazilian album, even with the help of big names like Caetano Veloso.

❝ Even at night, Naples is sunny.

❝ And "Three"! And my review couldn't be anything else but this!

❝ Sergio Caputo is one of the most underrated Italian artists ever

❝ Pop from a lounge bar, there you go.

❝ This is Sergio Caputo, an enticing mix of talent and fun. Try it to believe it.

❝ “Ideogrammi is not a record”, it's a miracle...

❝ No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find the black-and-white video of the TV broadcast where, in the autumn of 1973, Patty Pravo sang “Pazza Idea,” the summer hit of that year.

❝ But now Bowie is dead, and Pravo seems made of wax.

❝ «I love doing radio. It’s perhaps the mass communication medium I prefer, it’s intimate and sensual, and allows direct emotional contact, without filters. [...] Sometimes, while the record is playing, I leave the microphone open so that my breath is felt subliminally. And then there are the calls that allow me to give a voice to all those I talk to, and you can imagine yourself in their homes, in their lives… Doing radio this way, sometimes, becomes art.»

❝ One of the album’s high points is finally the concluding "Scimmia", one of the most dramatic pieces about drugs composed in Italy.

❝ I’m going out as the sun is setting.

❝ Samarcanda is a jewel of Italian music, a beautiful and well-crafted text.

❝ Eh, no, dear professor, this time we missed the mark.

❝ The killer inside is like an injection, you can’t stop it and it spares no one, no one escapes the deadline.

❝ If I were God... and I could very well be, otherwise I don’t see who!

❝ Gaber, who was a Communist, recalls what Communism was, admitting, even with obedient and humble mea culpas and with his incomparable irony, what the former wanted to be and what 'communism' has transformed into error. Or horror.

❝ Nada Malanima is rock!

❝ By chance, I watch the video of “Una chitarra e un’armonica” and I get hit by the classic punch of the nostalgic fool.

❝ Having said that, it is no longer difficult to believe that this album is a masterpiece. And it truly is.

❝ "Circo Immaginario" is the splendid album of a splendid artist.

❝ A good fifteen years before Norah Jones, the jazz/pop combination had already been attempted, but without reaching the top of the charts.

❝ Even today, “Gauguin’s Girls” is the song with which the author is identified.

❝ Grazia Di Michele’s song is raw, both in words and in music, a rare energetic rock in her repertoire, it leaves no room for hope…

❝ In the title-track, the difficult relationship between two women is told without murkiness (the theme of female homosexuality was not much explored at the time).

❝ Cocciante? Progressive? Resign yourself, but in this case, it's the reality.

❝ You might then love or not this artist, like all Italian pop music (ahem...), but - personal opinion - this record contains at least two/three memorable tracks.

❝ It's 1975, and after the success of 'Bella senz'anima,' Cocciante turns to the wizard of electronics, Vangelis, not yet the legend he would become later but already an established musician, in an attempt to Europeanize and modernize his sound.

❝ The dragging finale makes me understand why I have always considered Radius the greatest Italian guitarist.

❝ Simply, and casually, a masterpiece by Alberto Radius, like many others.

❝ Radius has practically traversed the entire history of Italian rock, from its beginnings certainly up to the '90s, alternating very diverse activities, as a member of groups (La formula 3, il Volo), a luxury session man (especially for Battisti and Battiato, Faust'o), producer (Giuni Russo), the list of his activities is quite long.

❝ "when a musician laughs, he puts down his instrument and laughs, and he doesn't look around and doesn't fear, he isn't afraid of his simplicity"

❝ "This man should have been frozen to be gifted to future generations"

❝ "Strange life, but it's as if life were a way of dying…"

❝ Cattaneo creates a sunny, bubbly, summery, sweet, sarcastic, and courageous album which, at the time (and perhaps even today), was ahead of its time...

❝ Flamboyant figure of Italian art.

❝ A high-quality product, an artist of class and charisma, of this I have no doubt, not lacking in a certain eclecticism and capable of adapting "dated" stylistic canons with intelligence and impeccable skill.

❝ I will no longer speak because an artist must only communicate through his work. The artist does not exist. His art exists

❝ There’s nothing else to notice but harmony and melody.

❝ I wonder if it’s rock or not...

❝ Conclusion: for the undersigned, one of the greatest songs ever, both for the lyrics and the music, not only of Venditti but of all Italian music,

❝ Now, Modena represents for me his best piece, and it is the one I would include in a top 10 of the greatest Italian songs of all time.

❝ Lilly ultimately marks the dawn of a great musical season

❝ Because I felt they were mine!

❝ "Luna" would become a key piece in the concert setlist for years

❝ Desaparecido is an album that speaks in very current terms (of war, hatred, and injustices perpetrated for reasons of state), yet it does so in such a poetic and almost theatrical manner, which makes it a true masterpiece.

❝ Spirito DiVino is not the best album by Zucchero Sugar Fornaciari, but according to me, it is.

❝ You come to the doctor when you're already on your deathbed, we'll see what can be done.

❝ Adelmo has come a long way, the farmer from Emilia.

❝ It was supposed to be a messed-up evening.

❝ GENNAIO!!!!! Damn, GENNAIOOOOO!

❝ I won’t say more because this record must simply be listened to.

❝ Glacial aloofness, ethereal and enveloping.

❝ The last album of Antonella Ruggiero with Matia Bazar is somewhat the sum of their styles which they have traversed over fifteen splendid years of career.

❝ After the acceptable '70s, it is in the '80s that Matia Bazar give their best, until Ruggiero leaves the group in '89.

❝ Singing in front of one spectator is like singing for a hundred thousand people. There’s no such thing as the audience. There is only each individual person.

❝ I must admit that he has an incredibly impressive voice.

❝ it is the album as a whole that feels compact, solid, inspired.

❝ “there is no answer. Each of us is everyone and no one. Love remains, perhaps, to tell us who we are”

❝ “the roads are right, even the wrong ones, just never be certain. I have no certainties but only doubts”

❝ “those who believe they can save themselves never save themselves alone, if you have no companions your road has no outlets to the sun”

❝ This is a record from 1996. Ron, the mysterious songwriter, is at one of his thousand comebacks.

❝ Ron is an artist who appears at just the right moment.

❝ “the ace in the hole, the one that will go down in history, is “Albachiara”, the mother of all Italian ballads,”

❝ “what will objectively become the biggest icon of national pop/rock music of the last 35 years”

❝ “It’s the closest thing to an American rocker ever seen in Italy.”

❝ Listen. Stop.

❝ a perfect example of "high chart-high quality"

❝ Splendid. Monumental. Minimalist. Epic. As moving as few works can be.

❝ A 72-year-old singer who performed for over 3 hours without ever holding back.

❝ At the beginning of 1977, Claudio Baglioni releases his sixth album, "Solo".

❝ “Assolo” is an excellent live album, comparable to certain performances by Billy Joel or the best Elton John (thinking of 17-11-70, of course).

❝ “Don't open the window, I don't want to hear what they have to say. Don't send me down with them, no!”

❝ “When night falls
and your dreams become heavy
rich, poor politicians
you are children of shit
we dig into the darkness
vomit blood on your truths!
Welcome to the waste
we won't drive you away!”

❝ “It doesn't matter who was the province and who the empire: the point was the fire”

❝ “Fedeli alla linea, even when there isn't one, When the emperor is sick when he dies or is doubtful or perplexed, Fedeli alla linea the line is not there.”

❝ “Live in Moscow, live in Budapest, live in Warsaw, live in Sofia, live in Prague, live in Pankow!”

❝ “CCCP is a segment in the life of each of us, very significant, decisive, and often illuminating. We have already written somewhere that before CCCP we lived and we will live even after. It will end, of course, we neither feel nor have ever been rock'n'roll stars, nor are we interested in a musical career. On the contrary, if it were so, perhaps there would be reason to worry...”

❝ Fabio Concato's best album, effectively ready-made and packaged like a compilation rather than an album of unreleased tracks, this "Fabio Concato" dated 1984.

❝ He's a born cabaret performer: "sing along... but softly if you're off-key!"

❝ In viaggio is a concept album, where the journey is both physical and emotional, in the Italy of the early '90s

❝ The album, very enjoyable, wisely arranged, rich not only in guitar riffs but also in brass that make it fuller and more complete, puts Gaetano Curreri's powerful voice to the test, probably at its best period.

❝ "La Faccia Delle Donne" certainly represents the highest point of Stadio's career, even though it doesn't mean they haven't made other great albums ("Canzoni Alla Radio", "Siamo Tutti Elefanti Inventati", "Stabiliamo Un Contatto").

❝ The set list, then, is absolutely commendable.

❝ “A movie of a non-stop day, like a series of emotional flashes alternating in everyday life”

❝ “Fotoromanza? With producer Conny Plank we spent a week in a cottage to find the right rhythm. We moved like baby elephants, sort of similarly, the whole body together” (Gianna Nannini)

❝ “Despite commercial missteps and inspirational ups and downs, Gianna Nannini has managed to build quite an appreciable career (considering the popular and successful Italian panorama), establishing herself as the Italian prototype of female rocker (even if there's very little rock), thanks mainly to her screaming raspy voice.”