Arisa: “I didn’t give up. I sent a song for Sanremo 2026”

If you think about it, Arisa metaphorically resembles Craco, the ghost town of her native Basilicata where the singer chose to shoot the video for her new single, “Nuvole”, an elegant and refined ballad that inaugurates a new phase of her career. «After many earthquakes, landslides and mudslides, that city was abandoned. But before that it was a small village full of life and rich in traditions. Love is a bit like that. When it arrives, it creates a castle in your heart made of flowers and promises. When it ends, however, emptiness remains”, she says. Among the absolutely most beautiful and precious voices of Italian music of the last twenty years, Rosalba Pippa – this is her real name – has not shone as she deserves for some time. It was 2014, more than ten years ago, when he won the Sanremo Festival with “Controvento”. It felt like a consecration. Instead, in recent years Arisa’s path has continued to be uphill, between records that went like this and like that (“Guardando il cielo” from 2016, “Una nuova Rosalba in città” from 2019 and “Ero romantic” from 2021), continuous changes of direction and also of entourage and record companies. He has been missing from the Sanremo Festival since 2021. It is there that he now dreams of naming his new recording project, with a song that he sent to Carlo Conti: «What have I missed in these years? But what do I know. I don’t blame myself like that. I sent many songs hoping that they could be accepted (among these also “La vita splendid”, written by Brunori Sas, rejected by Amadeus and then recorded by Tiziano Ferro in 2022, ed.). They probably weren’t up to the standard of the cast of those years. I don’t feel that there have been any injustices.”

But in 2016 it was you who vented on social media, pointing the finger at alleged injustices in the system: “They won’t make me end up like Mia Martini.” What was Arisa thinking at that moment?

«I was angry. And younger. I was referring to the exclusion from some television contexts. I fought, I screamed. I thought it wasn’t right. Today I understood that we need to be grateful for what we have, without expecting who knows what. I am not a person who gives up, but a concrete person who is grateful for everything that happens in her life. The possibility of singing, of releasing my own songs is a beautiful thing and makes me feel a little more adult than in the past.”

It’s a great lesson, today when music is all about the race for platinum records, for the ostentation of goals, for stadiums.

«I never sang to become famous or to be successful. I went to SanremoLab to ensure that my boyfriend at the time could find his way as a singer-songwriter. I sing out of love for my audience and I write songs because I think sometimes you need direction. And I presumptuously do my part to indicate a path, just like music did with me many years ago. My mom always tells me, “Remember where you come from.” I don’t forget the roots. I was lost in a small village in Basilicata, I was asking myself questions and there weren’t many answers: the only thing I could turn to was music. Especially the Italian one, the one I could understand. He taught me a lot. It formed me. When I write a song I always think: “Who will it be useful for? Who will it reach?”.

What career stage is this for you?

“Pretty. I’ve been working on the new album for a while now. I started writing it five years ago. The single is produced by Mamakass (Fabio Dalè and Carlo Frigerio, already alongside Coma Cose, ed.). They have great sensitivity. They managed to bring out the best from the material I brought them. “Nuvole”, so to speak, was born on the sound of a music box. I wrote it imagining a ballerina spinning and falling, spinning and falling. It is a sweet song that passes through the moments of the story of a woman on her way to freedom.”

Has Arisa achieved her freedom?

“Yes. And I worked hard to build that freedom. I’ve been working since I was 13. I’ve done everything in life. I’ve been singing since I was very little.”

“And now I don’t know who I am anymore,” you sing in “Clouds.” How autobiographical is this story?

«It was. Sometimes I feel disappointed in myself. I think it happens to everyone. The important thing is not to give in to rejection, even when it comes from ourselves. We must never stop, start from the ashes, get up every morning with a new attitude to cultivate what can nourish us.”

Did you have to fight?

«I had to understand some things. I’m fighting against myself. I’m not used to blaming others, in general. I’m someone who tries to grow based on my experiences. I think I was sometimes very anxious and made hasty artistic choices for fear of no longer being suited to the world of music.”

What are you referring to?

«”I was romantic”, for example. That album was partly an experiment. After turning 40 I did some soul-searching. “Clouds” is my gesture of love to give voice and strength to all the women who think they can’t make it and then actually make it.”

Will Arisa make it this time?

«But what do I know (laughs). It’s not like I have to do it. Thank God I already made it. I also look for myself through the songs I write, the life that flows. I understand who I am. I just want to be satisfied and happy with what I do. And now I am.”