Marco Masini
T'innamorerai

TONIGHT IN THE AIR THERE'S THAT 90s SCENT

I can already imagine the comments that will pour in once this review is out, like: "What a shitty album!", "Dexster, what are you doing? Have you gone mad?", "Masini is for losers!" etc. etc.... but you know what? This album was very important to me, it truly meant something at a certain point in my life, so I feel the duty to review it, whether you like it or not. Let's begin...

"T'innamorerai", Marco Masini's third album, dated 1993. At that time, TV, radio, and music magazines were still "friends" with this great artist, they considered him sad but not a loser, no, that label hadn't yet been stuck to him to the point of plummeting him into media darkness or, in the worst case, pushing him to swallow doses of antidepressants until it stopped him, as unfortunately happened to the great Mimì (Mia Martini); lately, Marco Masini is back in the spotlight of Italian pop music but, in my opinion, perhaps by compromising a bit too much... well... come on, come on, that's another matter, let's go back to 1993 when it's better.

Marco sang about the life of an artist, always in the middle of people yet always so alone, the sad everyday reality of urban life, the difficult relationships with love and family but also the immense love for music, a precious friend, Marco's playmate since he was a child, as he describes in the last track of the CD, "Un piccolo Chopin" ("I'll buy you the piano he said if you promise to study pulling the covers up my father on Christmas Eve"); a beautiful song, built on beautiful memories and a delightful musical carpet made of black and white keys.
Starting from the beginning of the album (or rather, the cassette I'm listening to) we find a hit, a symbolic song of the 90s, a master for all nostalgic of Bim Bum Bam and times gone by, namely the legendary "Vaffanculo", more than a song, a scream, an outburst, a cry of protest with which the artist, "pissed off to the max," lashes out against everything wrong in the world of music: the need to build a character; the fans who really think singers have the answers to everything, like some sort of gurus; the big bad wolves that populate the ruthless world of the music business; the cruelty that some critics can have, not towards the album but towards the artist... it all culminates in a loud and liberating, vaffanculo!!!

At its release, the right-minded people cried scandal, but Masini reassured "... I will leave in the noise of the whistles I will be the one to rid you of me of that crazy man who screams in the records about the need for love that is there...", pure poetry! And then she arrives, that is, "T'innamorerai"... great interpretation (desperate in heart and throat), great lyrics ("it will be beautiful to look at like a James Dean poster, it will be sweet the fear unhooking the blue jeans") and finally great auteur music, well played, well conducted and well orchestrated; the choirs are somewhat the backbone of the whole song, Marco's voice becomes, gradually, more and more violent until it reaches the climax and unloads in an immense finale; the protagonist of the song knows that she will fall in love but certainly not with him, perhaps with an asshole who will make her feel better (?), she’s even pregnant and doesn’t know how to tell him; well, I’d say a pretty heavy story. "T'innamorerai", a cult song in the panorama of Italian music, a song that digs too deep into me and retrieves images like me and my dad in the car, outside there's snow, Marco Masini's cassette screams out from the speakers; a singer-songwriter, a generation, there are no stories!

The entire work reaches very high peaks, piercing that clear and immaculate sky of Italian music, with songs like the disorienting "Dio non c'è" and "Voglio volare"; the first is a song full of doubts and questions, a song seeking a strange but strong need to believe in something when everything around falls apart ("what am I doing in this church, I who don't believe in your Jesus with this emptiness that weighs on me now that you are no more"), a song loaded with atmosphere, very spiritual; the second is a metropolitan story, acidic, very 90s: the routine of a squalid but welcoming bar ("without pity, I’m killing something of me, among the friends and enemies of a bar, that's how a pain becomes skinhead"), the greyness of a Saturday spent without the beloved woman but only with the desire to fly to her, the buildings acting as a cage and swallowing a lonely man, life passing by ("this life is Bach's escape in the deafening silence of my corridors"); Marco's voice is beautiful, shrill in the highest vocal parts where it seems almost as if a knife is tormenting him; the malaise becomes energy. And to the old historical songs like "Perché lo fai", "Le ragazze serie", "Disperato", "Cenerentola innamorata" etc. etc.... are added pieces like "Cantano i ragazzi", "Anna viviamo", "La libertà" and "Paura d'amare"; songs that have nothing to do with those of the latest generation singer-songwriters, fake losers with a guitar pretending to sing about love; after Guccini, Venditti, Baglioni, and Zero, a good portion of the Italian pop music was held up, whether you like it or not, by Marco Masini.

Italian pop music, blues, soft rock from the bar... that's what you need to mix to get a Marco Masini album. Unique voice, exceptional musician, romantic chronicler of a dirty reality.