Raf, Raffaele Riefoli, a leading name in Italian pop music between the '80s and '90s. Okay, "Self Control" was terrible, I agree, but teaming up with the Dati-Bigazzi duo paid off until he parted ways with them and went solo, resulting in silly and harmless little songs like "Sei la più bella del mondo" or similar tunes. However, from 1988 to about 1993, he made his mark, and he did it with two albums: this one, from 1989, and "Sogni... è tutto quello che c'è" from 1991. Personal opinion: I prefer the latter. More compact, more thought-out, better played, more entertaining. But, this "Cosa resterà" had not yet been reviewed on Debaser, and since I quite like it (not entirely, I'll explain now), I seized the opportunity.
Now, this is an album cooked up quickly, that is, written and played in a short time, useful in exploiting the success Raf had at that particular moment. Short (it only lasts 37 minutes), composed of 8 songs, 4 of which range from very good to good, and 4 from useless to "nothing special." The album was preceded by his Sanremo appearance (not particularly successful, 15th place) with "Cosa resterà degli anni '80" which is one of his best pieces (perhaps the best) and it is, like the whole album, thanks to the lyrics by the Dati-Bigazzi duo. Musically, it's a very '80s soft pop, with a sax which was never missing in that decade (but I, it's good for you to know, love the sax) and even a harmonica closing the song, the lyrics are the real gem: the Dati-Bigazzi duo portrays the decade 1980-1989 as no one had done before in Italy, a debatable decade whose repercussions we still face today, but the images it suggests are sharp and precise ("Cheerful and depressed years of madness and lucidity"; "Pierced and distracted years"; "Swaggering years of smiling wind-surfing myths"; "True advertising years", and that bit about Reagan and Gorbachev), now tell me if these weren't the '80s?
Then there was "Ti pretendo" (a danceable track very much of its time that also did very well as a 45 rpm, eighth best-selling of the year) but it's a track everyone knows, pointless to dwell on it.
The most incredible track, the one you don't expect, the one that raises an album's score from 2/5 to 3/5 is "La battaglia del sesso." Now, if you don't know it, listen to it, then come back here. First, it has a frenzied rhythm, better than any other chart pop song of the time, but my dear friends, the lyrics. Raf's voice, or rather, his interpretation, makes it credible (and cohesive) in a completely surprising way. First of all, it should have been called "Batracomiomachia," and I challenge anyone to know what that is. It was explained years ago by Bigazzi himself, the lyricist (one of the most complex heard in Italian music history, a matter that at certain points even Guccini in his golden age couldn't match):
"The original idea remains that of a tragicomic confrontation like that of the war between frogs and mice, which is indeed the meaning of Batracomiomachia, as those who have read Leopardi know. I decided to start with this word when I heard the text improvised in a clumsy English by Raf, with a phrase that sounded roughly like 'Hey! Are you gonna breakin’ my heart'. I thought about it, and I dared 'Hey! E' una batracomiomachia'. It sounded good, and the rest followed. It was a fun game of quotes and images, from Tex Willer who never thinks about sex, to Bataille's book 'L'Erotismo', which I recommended to Raf. The final result was a nice and ironic picture of a man-woman relationship, seen as chasing each other and then parting, forever or for a few days. All this against the backdrop of a new phenomenon for the time, the boom of sex on TV and in newspapers, after many still relatively modest years: 'Il sesso ci ha sorpreso, ci è saltato addosso,' says the text. By the end of the '80s, this anxiety of seeing sex, talking about sex had started to rage – very often pretending that it was 'all just sex.' The track ironically speaks about this, let's say, fixation that seemed to permeate society at the time" (Beppe Dati)
Verses like: "Siamo tutti matti, siamo fatti e il sesso scatena guai nei letti e un bell’incontro di boxe"; "Che donna che sei tu con il rossetto rosso ma l’uomo è Barbablù ed il suo cuore è un sasso dai latitanti agli ex ognuno pensa al sesso chi non ci pensa è Tex, hai letto 'L'Erotismo' di Bataille?"; "Andiamo un po' in relax perché ti fermi adesso?, non sono mica Tex, non so se afferri il nesso," besides being incredibly musical and rhythmic (reading them feels like tongue twisters) are among the funniest and least banal things to come out in Italian pop of the decade.
A mention is also deserved by the sweet "E gli altri dormono" with a good idea, in the chorus, of using an accordion, almost totally absent in the pop genre of the time. It may not be a masterpiece, but it's a song that nicely closes side A.
The downside is the 4 tracks that seem to have been tossed in as fillers. Perhaps, but only perhaps, an exception is "Santi nel viavai" which poetically narrates the world of the homeless. Here, the lyrics are not really focused, and the rhythm, wavering between measured and rhythmic, appears a bit uncertain, the least discardable of the discardable quartet. Unlike "Do I need your love," which is a very bland pop song without any vigor; "Fai," which, even with a nice chorus, is a copy of other already heard things (even in this album); and the sterile "E sia così," a sort of jazz from a blues café before closing everything and sending the patrons to bed, which poorly fits an album that makes rhythm its strong point, since even as a closing track, well, it’s not exactly the best of closures (then sure, it has its charm, but it's completely out of context, the sticking point is that).
Beyond everything, I hold it dear to my heart. I gladly listen to it again and am saddened by the fact that Raf slipped, very quickly, into anonymous chart pop more suitable for Radio Italia's summer afternoon schedule and didn't continue to seek quality. Eh, well, old story.
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