Pooh
Cento di queste vite

2000. Millennium Bug. New millennium, new century, new decade, new year. The Pooh enter their thirty-fourth year of activity, and twenty-seventh with the same lineup, with a work that should have been called "With a Great Future Behind Us," but which will be called "One Hundred of These Lives." Once again, as with the previous "A Happy Place," a neutral title, to convey to the audience the feeling of the album in its entirety, without highlighting one or more episodes in particular. Stefano begins with "A Great Love," a track that marks a rocking return for the band, after a decidedly pop album, and is the only one sung entirely by the drummer. "The other three," as Stefano would define them in a 2004 track, shine in three songs each. Roby in "Don't Forget Me" and "I Would Marry You Tomorrow," the first perhaps more successful than the second, both part of the sentimental vein of the keyboardist, and in another track which will be discussed later; Red in "Stay with Me," the single that launched the album, "I Would Want You More," and "The Other Side of Love," songs blended by the unmistakable style of the Venetian bassist; Dodi in the committed "Father at Twenty" (the best track on the album) and "Good Luck and Have a Good Trip" (acoustically arranged), and finally in the carefree "You Have to Believe." In all three of Dodi's tracks, the native of Bologna highlights his guitar skills, making him one of the best not only in Italy. There is also room for the choral moment, "The Breaths of the World," which was meant to be the launch single, where the four alternately take the verses as usual, and Dodi's cool solo does the rest. We reach the end with a track divided in two, just like "Parsifal" and "Where the Sun Begins," which, along with the song about the father at war, is the best on the album: "Can You Still Hear Me," dedicated to a fan who passed away in 1999 in an accident while on her way to one of their concerts. The Pooh performed it at the Christmas Concert in the Vatican. The second part, instrumental, is chilling and raises the level of the entire album, an album somewhat superior to the previous "A Happy Place," although not among the band's most important works. Stefano compensates for singing less by writing the lyrics together with the legendary, and lamented thirteen years later, Valerio Negrini. After a child in a cardboard envelope, a black acrobat on a green background embodies the idea of the album on the cover.