Tiziano Ferro
111 Centoundici

THE REVIEW

Before embracing a banal yet successful pop, Tiziano Ferro shook up Italian pop with two albums that redefined its boundaries. In essence, at a time when Italian music was floundering between dull boy bands and old legends who had already given and said it all, the impact of the Ferro-Canova pop duo was as disruptive as it was surprising within the Italian music scene.

It was quickly labeled as chart pop, hits for teenage girls in rapture, yet that skillful use of beats, so un-Italian and so very international, and those lyrics' metrics truly never seen before in Italy had something extra.

Tiziano Ferro's masterpiece was, more than the first album "Rosso relativo," the mature "111." To those who asked him for an album with commercial appeal, Ferro responded with an overwhelming and intimate album at the same time, 111 are the kilos he weighed before becoming famous. The first side is a barrage of high-level chart hits ("Sere nere," "Ti voglio bene," the celebrated and acclaimed "Non me lo so spiegare") but it's the second side that captivates, from the gimmick of "Eri come l'oro ora sei come loro" to the New Orleans-like atmosphere of "Temple Bar," from the fun, perhaps a bit self-serving, of "10 piegamenti!" to the very delicate closing of "13 anni."

An unrepeatable album, of devastating impact, considering the sales, an absolute record, and what it would bring to the Italian pop world in the following years.

A semi-masterpiece that will find few admirers on this site, but so be it. The subsequent Ferro, honestly, will abdicate in favor of sounds that will take him to the top of the charts but will no longer have the impact this album had back in 2003.