Review: Francesca Gabbani - "On your side" (track for track)

I tried to listen several times On your sideFrancesco Gabbani's new album. I tried to immerse myself in his narrative universe, to let me involve me by the melodies and the themes that cross him. Yet, despite the efforts, I was unable to find an access point.

The thing I liked most was the song Sanremo Long live lifethe song that is perhaps the mirror of the whole disc.

I was unable to please the record but this is just a subjective aspect. It does not enter my mechanisms of my current aesthetic.
“On your side“ It is the story of a forty -year -old artist who reflects on everyday life and emotional dynamics that accompany our experience.

A disc of evolution:

I will never finish growing, “says Gabbani. “I like the idea of being constantly evolving, in motion, and these songs are a portrait of this moment. I am a photograph taken at a precise point of my life, a little further in the time line. Over the years, I try to go more and more deeply, but in the midst of all this, the funny, provocative and ironic aspect that also guides my analysis of society “.

Words that suggest an intent of renewal, but unfortunately they are not reflected in music. “On your side“ It is the Gabbani of all time: recognizable, solid, but without innovative momentum. An album that does not dare to go beyond the boundaries already traced by the artist, remaining anchored to tested formulas without marking a real evolution.

A pleasant listening for those who have loved their path to date, but without that spark capable of surprising or redefining its artistic trajectory.

Alas – I did not succeed!

Track for track

1) I come to trust you

In a society that moves us away more and more by ourselves, where we are influenced by the media and we feel unrelated to our own life, this song tries to find answers, or at least to ask the right questions. Proposes the need to stop, listen and resume thinking. He wants to awaken our critical sense and help us to resume control of our life, to get out of the silence that surrounds us and start again to dialogue sincerely with others, without filters or barriers, finding in them a part of ourselves.

2) Long live life

Who are we? What is our role on this planet, in this universe?
What is the meaning of our existence?
In the face of these fundamental questions, we thinking human beings are all the same: we are afraid!
Life does not provide us with answers directly. And then we bargain in search of a escape of truth, sometimes telling us about lies, looking for meaning in material arrival, in social realization: “I am because I think, I say, I do and I own this”.
But it is only an illusion, a carpet under which to hide the suffering of “not knowing”.
And then “Long live life” tries to suggest the antidote: to accept serenely not to know and be grateful to existence as such, as it is, and until it lasts.
Descartes said: “Cogito ergo sum”, I exist because I think.
“Long live life” says: “Spiro Ergo Sum”, I exist because I breathe.
And if I breathe with you, I am even more aware, grateful and alive.

3) Babel

The song was born from a reflection on the power of will and awareness, giving voice to an inner liberation process. The song tells a “metaphorical suicide”, in which the individual detaches himself definitively from the roles imposed, by the Beliefs, the ideologies and vocations that have limited it for too long. It is an act of rebellion against social conventions and external forcing, a cry of freedom in which the authenticity of the ego is affirmed to find the strength of being themselves.

4) lightness

The simplicity of the newspaper, the small gestures and the actions that we take for granted are those that remain vivid in the memories and in our experience, those that, without being aware of it, have shaped our growth.
When the darkness seems to take over on our mood and the heart becomes heavy like a boulder, the best solution, in order not to remain oppressed is lightness. Lightness means living things with irony and drawing the best from the worst, even when the latter seems to prevail. Very often, however, it is difficult to achieve this type of awareness alone, and it is there that others come into play. When you are surrounded by positive people, it is much easier to find this type of relief. In this sense, lightness is the basis of being together; Because in fact lightness brings us closer to the other, it helps us to feel part of a community, to weave the thread of empathy and solidarity. He leads us to get out of indifference and allows us to try the pleasure of feeling connected by even thin relationships. Read but not less profound.

5) Thoughts

He tells the courage and strength they want, sometimes, to face themselves, letting himself go to find himself.
She was born from the observation of a teenager lost between doubts and insecurities; A boy who feels invisible to a world that runs too fast to notice his fears, of his need to be simply seen.
The song wants to be a hug that invites you to look inside, to give a name to its pains, to welcome them without fear or shame, trying to listen to the weight of thoughts they oppose, letting themselves be wrapped in the embrace of those who really love it.
It is a reflection that starts from a teenager but has the ambition to have a universal breath, because fragility knows no age.
The world also turns without us, but it is precisely by facing our darkness that we can find the motivation to mend the wounds of the time and meet the light again.

6) beyond

In all this “confusion” we have fortunately still gestures to make.
On the imaginary line between good and evil, while we rock with the abyss, between the apocalypse and the door of the house, between neurosis and Nirvana is only kissing me.

7) As it comes to me

Remember the power of songs.
Who come to take us in the traffic of thoughts and take us away, and make us whistle, or dance.
We should all have a song to sing with arms wide open on the Sanremo stage. A simple and beautiful song, without pretensions, meaningless, to be singing as it comes to us, that does not make too much think but only feel good.

8) Fruit melancholy

We live in a scenario that tends to take us to desire what we don't have and be what we are not. To experience the present with emotional intensity, we just have to crog in a therapeutic melancholy, in beautiful and ugly memories, but which make the emotions of the moment true. Citing the great author Gabriel García Márquez: what matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.

9) Everyone all

In the search for the balance between the right or wrong, social ethics and subjective morality, who we are and how others see us, the choices that mark our path, the remorse and regrets, expectations and renunciations, “all everything “Try to remember how relative the concept of perfection is.
Without giving a solution, proposes it the provocative question: “Do you feel imperfect in the face of the judgment of other individuals, or does you accept internally that you are perfect as you are of course?

10) Modigliani

The song Modigliani tries to take stock of what happens in the life of unreliable such as love, hatred, sin, forgiveness and the game of fantasy that is played with any event can happen.
Transforming it into an unexpected reality, where everything is granted, so that the heart, complex more than ever, finally goes to make life in the mind and belly of love.

Score: 6.00

I come to trust you – vote 6.00
Long live life – vote 6.50
Babel – Vote 6.00
The lightness – vote 6, oo
Thoughts – 5.50 vote
Beyond 5.50 vote
Just as I come to me -Voto 5.00
Fruit melancholy – 5.00 vote
All all – Vote 6.50
Modigliani – Vote 6.50