Being embraced by songs: a memory of Paolo Benvegnù

Like anyone who has listened to even one of his songs, I am shocked by the sudden death of Paolo Benvegnù. He was, quite simply, one of the best songwriters we have had in Italy in the last 30 years.

In the last year, he had regained recognition and visibility, thanks to the stupendous “It’s useless to talk about love” (Premio Tenco) and the “Reloaded” version of “Piccoli fragilissimi film”, an album which 20 years ago marked his solo debut after the end of the Schism. A handful of intimate songs, reflective but never self-referential, social but never moralistic: a truly unique style, complemented by wonderful concerts, whether he picked up an acoustic guitar or played with his band. His words between songs, like his answers in interviews, were stories as beautiful and disarming as the songs themselves.

We have interviewed Benvegnù three times in the last year, four if we consider the recent conversation on music and mental health at Milan Music Week – a heart-to-heart chat about the mechanisms of this system.
I thanked him at the end – and it wasn’t one of those things you say in interviews: his words stayed with me, due to their frankness and intensity. He responded by hugging me and resting his head on my shoulder – even though we didn’t know each other but we had met a few times, like those who do this job. A spontaneous and disarming gesture. Like his songs, as powerful and disarming as hugs.

Benvegnù has always been a bit on the margins, out of the spotlight and the traditional mechanisms of Italian music. As the words of “Canzoni ugly” ironically tell – a great song from the last album that perfectly embodied his spirit, that of someone who welcomed the victory at the Tenco award by saying: “They must have been wrong”.

“I’ve always wondered how to make ends meet
It is necessary for me to oppose the productive, industrial and destructive chain
So I concentrated seriously and listened to the radio
And in a blaze of iodine, patients queuing for the sea have songs to sing (…)
Get up, there’s a lot to hate to make music that’s shit-…/
For example, I discovered that the only thing I know how to do is write bad songs that everyone can like.”

A direct and perfect song, with a memorable refrain – Benvegnù had a crazy sense of melody: in a parallel universe, that song would have been a hit, like many others in his repertoire.

Yet it was understatement made artist. When we interviewed him for the reissue of “Very fragile little films”told us that the Tenco award is a recognition not only for him, but “for a whole world between great songwriting and indie that becomes something else”, the one that emerged from the rock of the 90s.
A good part of that world (Subsonica, Marlene Kuntz, Afterhours) has managed to pass under the lights of the mainstream for more or less long periods, often through the other side of Sanremo opposite to Tenco, that of the Festival. Benvegnù, however, often remained in the shadows, pursuing his musical vision with mixed success. As he told us recently:

“I don’t worry about the results simply because in this country those who follow a “research” path are not seen. It’s as if you’ve been throwing stones in the same pond for 25 years and it’s obvious that you can’t think of getting paid to do something like that. kind, just as it is obvious that only someone who has the same sensitivity as you comes to give you a caress. However, despite this, the difficulty in physical survival – this economic somnambulism that I have experienced in recent years – that caress is worth more than any other. thing one can have, therefore I move forward with happiness, with an incredible, unspeakable joy.

The latest album “It’s useless to talk about love” it was precisely the sum of this journey, with memorable melodies, arrangements that are both simple and refined, lyrics that enter you like a blade and a caress. My favorite song on the album was “Marlene Dietrich,” which has a wonderful structure with intertwining strings, piano and guitars, and an even more extraordinary melody line, with words that have an even different flavor today:

“Let me burn for you, let me consume for you
Indelicate poetry of the fair canon
Like Marlene Dietrich I could free you or avenge you
what can you give me of yourself?

The only small, very small consolation is that, in 2024, his bad songs had finally started to receive the prominence they deserved. A result also thanks to the work behind the scenes of those who were accompanying him in this period and of the colleagues who had supported him, who had collaborated with him in his latest projects, in particular in the “Reloaded” version of “Piccoli fragilissimi film”, published last fall. An album that remains a cornerstone of independent Italian music and beyond.

It makes me even more angry that he is missing now, because I would have seen and seen him live again and again, and I would have been curious and eager to be embraced by his songs again. Which I will continue to do, obviously, but with a sense of melancholy and loss that Italian music didn’t deserve.