My Italian soundtrack

You love Italian coffee, Italian wine and Italian pasta. (You and Stanley Tucci!)

But what do you know about Italian pop music?

Probably the first time you’ve ever seen those words strung together in a sentence!

But bear with me, because if the only thing you know about Italian music is opera or Il Divo, then there’s room for a little more info in your mental music library. Plus singing along to Italian music is a much better way of boning up on your Italian than cracking open a phrase book.

So here are four Italian pop songs worth your time:

“Hai un momento, Dio?” by Ligabue ('You gotta minute, God?') -- click title to see/hear

In which Ligabue imagines coming face to face with God and asking him which soccer team tops Inter in the finals (as you might if you met God and were an Italian male), if it’s sunny in the Great Beyond and also why? Just why? Ligabue fancies himself the Italian answer to Bruce Springsteen if the Boss were from Bonjovi’s part of Jersey.

Another favorite is his song “Certe Notti,” in which he croons:

Certe notti la macchina è calda e dove ti porta lo decide lei.

Certe notti la strada non conta e quello che conta è sentire che vai.

Certe notti la radio che passa Neil Young sembra avere capito chi sei.

Certe notti somigliano a un vizio che non voglio smettere, smettere mai

 

(TRANS: Some nights, the car is warm and the one who decides where you’re going

Some nights, the road doesn’t matter, what matters is going somewhere

Some nights the radio that’s playing Neil Young seems to know who you are

Some nights are like a vice that I don’t ever ever want to quit

(2)

“America” by Gianna Nannini -- Video above

The title of the song is likely to grab your attention. But if not, how about this: it’s about self-pleasure. It’s also one of the “hardest” songs in the Italian pop repertoire – a repertoire not known for grungy, realistic rock.

Would you like to know more? The song, by one of the only bad girls in Italian rock, is an anthem about independence and the difficulty of ever knowing anyone really well. But even if you don't know the words, the beat tells you everything you need to know about rebelling, Italian-style.

(3)

“Le Ragazze” by Luca Carboni (“Girls”) -- click here to hear/see

The song is about women getting tans and flying around like butterflies but also stinging men, including the singer, like bees. No, really -- that's what it's about.

Le ragazze si abbronzano

Ma le ragazze, a cosa pensano?

(Girls get tans/But what do girls think about?)

Later he sings:

Poi di notte si accendono

(Then come nighttime, they light up)

There are so many more songs that I love and I think it’s largely because of the way I trace my journey into Italian music. It begins with “La canzone del sole,” by Lucio Battisti. 

Nando is strumming his acoustic guitar in piazza; behind us is the fountain and nowhere to be seen are the horses that will take center stage here in Piazza del Campo, come summer. The way he sings the song, the way we’re sitting in a piazza in Siena, Italy, like we have a reason to be there (like a girl from Hicksville has a reason to be there), well I couldn’t turn my back on Italian music. It made me feel just a little Italian when I was anything but.

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