Mia Martini
Per amarti

For all vinyl enthusiasts, exactly forty years after its release, the LP "Per amarti" is back these days in the best music stores. This splendid album marked the beginning of the artistic partnership between Mia Martini and Ivano Fossati.

Mimì had recently returned to RCA, the label that launched her in 1971 with a challenging and revolutionary album for its time titled "Oltre la collina". She had quickly left RCA for the great recording successes achieved with Ricordi, a Milanese record company. However, the singer decided to break ties with Ricordi in '76 due to irreconcilable artistic differences that had arisen. This led to a disputed legal battle in which she would sadly be defeated for contractual non-compliance.

After a new beginning with a marvelous and very sophisticated album like "Che vuoi che sia... Se t'ho aspettato tanto" (1976), which saw her once again performing songs by some of the best authors of the time, new conflicts arose with RCA due to the record company's imposition of the song with which Mimì represented Italy at Eurofestival 1977, namely "Libera", published in several countries worldwide.

"Per amarti" arrived in the fall of the same year, bearing the title of the stunning, eponymous song by Bruno Lauzi (already the author of two major hits like "Piccolo uomo" and "Donna sola") and Maurizio Fabrizio, which was initially intended for her friend Ornella Vanoni.

Numerous covers were included, among which I would highlight: a very successful "Give a Little Bit" by Supertramp, translated by Fossati into "Se finisse qui" (also released as the B-side of the single "Per amarti"); "When I Need You" by Leo Sayer (also recorded by Celine Dion twenty years later on her very successful album "Let's Talk About Love"), which becomes "Se ti voglio" in Italian; "Somebody to Love" by Queen, translated into Italian by Mia Martini herself with the title "Un uomo per me", characterized - moreover - by a breathtaking finale, featuring one of the best steel-sharp high notes in her discography, along with the choral fusion of the three voices of Mimì, Fossati, and Aida Cooper, a longtime friend and backing vocalist for both Bertè sisters.

The album best represents the "early-era" Mia Martini, alternating moments of intense drama - as in the same "Per amarti" (one of her greatest performances ever), in "Da capo" (written and composed by Riccardo Cocciante, and performed the same year by Mina in the splendid LP "Mina con bignè") and in the exquisite "Canto malinconico" (another gem from the best of Lauzi) - with more carefree moments, which are instead found in the aforementioned "Se finisse qui" (the opening track of the album), in "Sentimento" (the first song entirely written and composed for her by Ivano Fossati), in the delightful "Innamorata di me" (which winks at disco music) and in the "feminist" (or almost) "Ritratto di donna", which Mimì performed with the right amount of grit and sweetness at the World Popular Song Festival Yamaha in Tokyo, where she also emerged victorious.

All this as evidence that Mia Martini could embrace any type of repertoire, well beyond the cliché of the "lonely woman" often defeated, in which many authors (as well as much of the audience and industry professionals) would have liked and still want to confine her. Until the end, she firmly insisted that she did not want to be constrained, as she had already sung in "Stavolta è proprio no", one of her best unreleased songs, unfortunately excluded from the album's lineup at the time, along with the beautiful "Io andrò": both tracks would later be recovered for the posthumous anthology "Canzoni segrete".

"Per amarti" is also owed to Mimì's collaboration with Charles Aznavour, who, during the album's promotion in France, was struck by the interpretive intensity of the young Italian singer. He invited her to join him for a series of concerts that in January 1978 also reached the Olympia in Paris, the sacred temple of French music.

Despite its release in Spain, France, and Japan, the album only achieved partial success at the time, partly due to limited distribution, which was reported a couple of years later in an interview where Mia Martini herself explained the reasons for the new contract breakup with RCA that would follow the release of this LP, beginning the most controversial phase of her life, marked by the turbulent love story with Ivano Fossati.

"With that record, I was embarking on the path of pain, which I had not truly experienced until then.", Mimì had a chance to declare at the end of her days, thus recalling a pivotal moment in her life as a woman and an artist, which now comes back to life in all its charm through Sony Music Legacy Italy.