Righeira
The Best

Hello Boyz, after the partially positive feedback on de|recensione about Toto Cutugno, I return to the scene of the crime to talk to you about a combo forgotten by most but capable of giving a symbolic contribution to the consumer music of the '80s, a decade I enjoy analyzing for you on these pages.

I'm talking about the legendary Righeira, a duo from Turin that rejuvenated Italian pop of those years with spicy additions of electro-funk music, always danceable, accessible to everyone, and blessed with great public success.

No one ever noticed that Michael and Johnson Righeira, in those early years of their careers (around 1983), were mimicking the poses, music, and style of PiL by Johnny Rotten - in some ways also BAD by Mick Jones - obviously in a minor and less provocative version in terms of music and ideology, or rather, post-ideology. They added something colorful, like architectural hairstyles, pointed shoes, colorful clothes, and an ironic verve that made them picturesque, but not threatening, to the moralists and the establishment of the old guard.

Getting to the point and describing the songs in this remarkable collection by the Righeira duo, always avoiding a tedious track by track, I focus on the group's most famous pieces. "Vamos a La Playa" ('nnamo alla spiaggia), a hit of summer '83, stands out for its playful and exotic use of Spanish - a novelty for those times - anticipating the trends of much Latin music. All on a synth-pop backdrop that describes, almost like a cheerful march, the youth's desire for fun at the time... precisely consisting of the desire to go to the beach. Certainly superficial, both in content and form, the piece appears somewhat the symbol of the age of disengagement and fooling around, which finds its epitome in youth as a season of life and summer as a season of the year.

"No Tengo Dinero" (I ain't got a penny), a hit from the following winter, echoes the rhythmic patterns of the summer single, with a moderate pace in the verses, and explosive, almost like a stadium anthem, in the chorus. Here too, obviously, the use of Spanish returns as a language, on one hand, foreign - and thus bait for the young people's love for the foreign -, on the other, easily intelligible for Italians, and thus familiar to most. In practice, even those who didn't know foreign languages with Righeira could pass themselves off as foreign-loving!

In the '80s, the duo's style evolved alongside their human and professional growth, with the abandonment of foreign lexicons in favor of Italian. The mature Righeira is remembered, above all, for pieces like the famous "L'estate sta finendo" ('85) (Summer is over), where the description of leaving the beaches - chiastic compared to "Vamos a La Playa" - barely veils the trite theme of farewelling youth, a commonplace that frankly recurs in poems, novels, stories, and films... here rendered with melancholic melodies. A nice piece, beyond everything an interesting legacy of the '80s, even if on the same line of thought I prefer "Il mare d'inverno" by Ruggeri/Bertè.

The last notable piece of Michael and Johnson's career is "Innamoratissimo" ('86) (All in Love), presented at the Sanremo festival without great success, only to then widely redeem itself in terms of sales as a single. Cheerful with brio, characterized by electronic breaks, the piece has vague echoes of "Video Killed Radio Star" by the Buggles ('80), at least regarding the melodic effects underlying the verse. The refrain denotes the usual climax with an anthemic effect: not bad, but perhaps repetitive.

The last noteworthy piece, released in '90, is the single "A ferragosto": beautiful for the melody and the usual pounding chorus, the track betrays a certain repetitiveness both in terms of the topics covered - August fun and the usual summer rituals - and in terms of the rhythmic melodic structure. Sign that the creativity of the Righi, as fans call them, was drying up, almost as a prelude to the disbandment after an unfortunate album in '92.

Certainly, the '90s, with youth music drunk on grunge and a general return to pop-rock, more than electronic, atmospheres, made it difficult for the duo to survive. Righeira is never talked about too much, nor too well, also because they do not like revival and have always preferred, even in years away from the scenes, cutting-edge electronic atmospheres like house, sometimes working as DJs or producers. They are sometimes dismissed as just another little band, but their songs, I say especially for those under 25, have truly marked an era, and many of our cousins or older brothers, even if they deny it, approached music by perhaps buying their singles. Although I do not think they should be forgotten or snubbed, even if we can only save a handful of pieces from their career.

Since I exaggerated with more complex lexicons, deliberately alienating the tone of the review with the seemingly banal themes treated, this time I bid you farewell with an aphorism

Semper Vestri Il_Paolo

PS: not to advertise, but they have a nice site