Zucchero
Un po' di Zucchero

Perhaps not everyone knows "Un po' di Zucchero": it's the first (indeed, very first, as I will explain in a moment) album by Adelmo Fornaciari, which went essentially unnoticed, so much so that you might come across discographies on Sugar that don't even mention it (!), opting to start directly with what is in reality the second work by the Roncocesino singer, namely "Rispetto" (1985).

We are in the now distant 1983, when in the Italian music scene the echoes of the seventies have not yet completely faded away (sometimes, on the contrary, they continue to resound strongly), and the times are not yet ripe for certain melodic/harmonic experiments and transgressions. Paroxysms and exaggerations would now be out of place: better to remain faithful to the composed and calm language of the Italian pop tradition. This is the context in which "Un po' di Zucchero" is set, for which a preliminary clarification is obligatory: don't expect the "usual" Zucchero (the "classic" one of "Blue's", of "Oro, incenso e birra", or the somewhat "watered-down" one of the subsequent albums): there are no traces of funky, gospel, blues influences (if I may use the term…) in this work, nor are there the famous (or infamous?) "quotations", more or less blatant, from other artists. Indeed, we must distance ourselves greatly from the immoderate artist (and man), lover of excesses, openly allusive or even lewd: the first Zucchero really seems quite the opposite, starting from the album cover (very simple and somewhat modest, in contrast to the histrionic image chosen for "Rispetto"), where the (then) washed-out and gentle face of young Adelmo stands out.

"Un po' di Zucchero" is an intimate, sweet, introspective, melancholic piece of work: delicate, soft songs, that evoke intangible sensations but are not any less beautiful for it, quite the opposite.
There are 10 tracks. It begins with "Una notte che vola via", a small gem that in 1982 earned the twenty-six-year-old Adelmo a place in the finals in the "young" category: marked by amorous throbs and accompanied by the magnetic enchantment of sea, sky, stars, it is a song filled with poignant evocations, well supported by a simple and direct melody. Next is "Non aver paura", brief and whispered, a clean and pure love song, with an adolescent flavor. Then comes "Tempo ne avrai", a recollection centered on the expansion of time which, when one is young, seems infinite, and tomorrow is a smiling promise. "Fuoco nel mattino" is one of the most beautiful songs on the album: listening to it, the images (waking up after making love, running in the fields, her clothes, village life, the table in the trattoria, a steaming cappuccino) flow in slow motion, shrunken in the poignant melancholy of memory: it is the story of a natural and innocent feeling, which becomes a promise of eternal love ("lontano dai giorni neri amica mia dagli occhi chiari, per tutto il tempo che mi resta t'amerò"). Also very beautiful is "Che destino sei", highly suggestive, like all the songs on this album, where the words should not be taken so much for what they literally mean, but rather for their connotative value, evoking dreams: the complicity between lovers ("cacciatore non c'è che ci possa sorprendere"), the clarity of the feeling ("vicini a un cielo pulito"). Decent "Nuvola", also admitted to the final phase of Sanremo (1983). High levels are resumed with "Come l'aria": nice melody and words entrusted to the wind, yearning for freedom ("noi come l'aria che vola su terre lontane e padroni non ha… chi siamo noi, senza catene nel male e nel bene"). Among the best is also, in my opinion, "Perché sei bella": listening to it brings back memories of walks between sweethearts, hand in hand... the compliments to her beauty ("perchè sei bella, come un settembre di Normandia"). Unimpressive "Sandra", the least successful in my opinion; Adelmo redeems himself with the last track of the album, "Stiamo insieme", perhaps the most intimate and collected song of all ("dolci momenti tuoi, fragili gesti, quando ti svesti…addormentati a terra i tuoi sogni veglierò…mentre fuori è già domani").

In short, "Un po' di Zucchero" really seems to me a work worthy of being (re)listened to; quickly condemned to oblivion, it would have deserved a better fate: simple and immediate words and melodies, but at the same time meaningful and imaginative, able to express delicate and tender feelings without falling into banality and rhetoric. A work that settles scores with the seventies and with the classic Italian melody of which it is clearly a debtor, a pattern that Zucchero will never resume: soon we will have the shift towards the genres that will make him famous and consecrate him to the highest levels; the cries, the transgressions, and the excesses will come, partly spontaneous and partly artfully constructed. But the nostalgia remains for a past made of inexpressible sensations destined to be set in the mosaic of the sweetest and purest memories.