Cesare Cremonini, in search of poetry in streaming

With Cesare Cremonini it is almost impossible to fly low or practice understatement. He defines his new “Alaska Baby” as an artistic work, the “most album of his career”: it arrives after a journey to the American Arctic Circle in pursuit of the Northern Lights, but it was above all a journey in search of himself himself, which was transformed into 12 songs that travel far from the repetitive and serial forms of pop, from which he also comes.
Cesare Cremonini reflects on the highest systems – in his songs and when he speaks: even when the journalist asks the simplest and most banal questions, the ones that need to be asked to explain an album, Cesare speaks in metaphors, in poetic figures. Look for “poetry in streaming”, as one of the songs on this album says. At the same time it is deeply rooted in today, in a system that lives on numbers, which this time have rewarded it. “Now that I no longer have you” went to the top 5 in the charts for weeks, leading the ratings on the platforms, in among artists of other generations. But he reminds us that everything comes from talent and songs: “When the future is in artistic works and we can still see it even in a song”, he says.

You defined “Alaska baby” as an artistic work: a challenging and ambitious term. What do you mean by this definition?

A basic work of art is an entity that at a certain point begins to guide you. You start writing it and writing it in a way that is what you were imagining, you change direction and at a certain point she reveals herself and you are a microbe, you are nothing compared to her. Then your task is to dig as if you were digging up some kind of forgotten amphora.
You cannot help but call something that you found and understood that it was much older and more important than you as an artistic work.

So much so that all the experience of the album that I have left is not from now on. It’s in having made it, in having brought it to light.

Is making an album like digging?

I have extraordinary memories, I have created connections, friendships, loves. I went deep inside myself in a violent way, I transformed myself, I improved myself, I cried and rejoiced together with this thing and now the end result is simply that this album can go elsewhere. What I experienced cannot be exchanged for a first place, a second place, a third place in the rankings.

As in an opera, these songs have a theme, journey and rebirth, and a narrative arc. Is “Alaska Baby” a concept album?

I didn’t want to make a concept, but it’s definitely a whole that I can’t divide. I wanted to make an album divided into small fragments. After “The Girl of the Future”, a very conceptual album related to the pandemic, I simply wanted to be lighter. But this time too, no way.
I came up with songs like “Ragazze facile” which are temples within my way of writing and which represented for me very painful and tiring human passages on a personal level.

When songs like these come along, everything starts spinning around like a solar system: if you break it up you’re betraying what you’re doing, and I couldn’t do that.

In “Girls Easy” you sing about “your wrong life”, which “is a gift from heaven, and when you laugh I believe it”.

It takes courage to truly see. It takes courage to recognize when love is something important and difficult. This belief in love is something that will never convince you that you are a beautiful person, but maybe it will lead you to believe it for once.

Is the “wrong life” you are referring to also that of the artist? Have you ever thought you wanted “a quiet life” like Tricarico sang?

The one in this life is a call from the moon, it is not a rational call. You live in such profound anxiety that you turn towards your partner, look at her and say in desperation, I have to go, I have to go. And this thing sometimes takes on pathetic aspects, I realize, even touching and in some ways painful.

In the documentary that accompanies the album you argue that we must distinguish the author’s song from the pop song. Is it really necessary to make this distinction?

The song can be a work of design, it can be a sinister attempt to exploit the market, it can be many things, it’s a free world.

But when you treat it as an artistic work it takes you to a new place.
Within “Alaska Baby” there are several attempts at musical experience: I belong to a generation that studied music, that learned to play the piano, that learned to use cars to put instruments inside. The concept of songs as an author different from pop songs in my opinion also lies in being an intellectual, a commentator. If you try to make sure that the song still teaches something it is not out of presumption, it is not out of judgement, but because the song of the author contains a truth.
It probably contains the future. We have lost faith in the future, the new generations do not have it. When the future is in artistic works we can still see it even in a song.

But you come from pop…

In my opinion pop is a horizon. However, it is a horizon that leaves perfect ambiguity for the public to relive their experiences on a daily basis. It’s more consumption, it’s a more tailored suit. The song as an author is disturbing, provocative. In my case, being an author is a completely different path, I can’t define myself in the same way when I try to use pop as a language. They are very different and distinct registers for me, this does not mean that what I say is an absolute truth, it is my way of interpreting, of organizing the library.

There is a lot of electronics on the album, which you have often used in the past too. Where does this passion for synthetic sounds come from?

In my opinion this album is a very instrumental album: I feel it is deeply linked to the 70s, it has a sentimentality, a narrative within the structure of the songs, it uses certain drum and guitar sounds… There is a electronica that speaks a darker language on this album, like an eyeliner.

Fruit of the meeting with Alessio Natalizia and Alessandro de Crescenzo?

Yes, at a certain point I heard Cosmo’s album, the best of 2024 in my opinion, and I left one night in my car alone and went to listen to it at Geox in Padua, traveling in the fog. In addition to complimenting Cosmo, I then started conversations with Alessio, who had produced his album, and I saw how much he had a very strong love for the world of song, how much he respected the song and in my opinion this is what he and Cosmo did it in an extraordinary way. I took it to the studio and the first thing we did was “Now That I Don’t Have You Anymore” and it worked really well.

There are several guests on the album: Elisa, Luca Carboni. Are they featuring or collaborations?

This is an album that was born almost in a karmic way: I chose to live in a certain way to go and look for it and things happened to me. “Aurora borealis” was born half in Italy and half in Alaska, for example.
“San Luca”, on the other hand, is a song that I wrote together with Davide Petrella at the beginning of my return from Alaska.

There was this desire to return to the origins of everything, of myself. There was this both religious and secular icon of St. Luke that I see from my house and that spoke to me all the way from Alaska. Luca is a living legend, in my opinion: after the very difficult human journey he has undertaken in the last two years, he encountered this song: I understood that it was his voice that was singing, there is a moving synergy between the text, my story and his.

The collaboration with Meduza is more unexpected: how did it come about?

It was born because “My heart is already yours” was a song of unresolved restlessness, it wasn’t straight, it didn’t have a Beatles-like development, it didn’t go into a bridge, it didn’t open up. Deep house is an interesting musical interpretation: the Meduza have made music accessible that recalls the sounds that we remember from going to raves in the 90s. I met some extraordinarily good, nice guys and above all with a great musical brain.

Are you looking for “poetry in streaming”, how do you sing in “Streaming”? What relationship do you have with the numbers that today dominate the musical system much more than poetry?

I have a professional ethic dictated by my generation which means that I would never harm the system in which I live. I’m interested in the current discography system, I’ve married the world of music, I’ve dreamed of it since I was a child. But I never steal from the present: this is what I mean when I talk about the fact that numbers don’t interest me.

However, “Now that I no longer have you” has achieved great numbers and this cannot fail to be important for you and for those who work with you.

It is clear that numbers are pleasing, that they are very important because they allow you to have breathing space towards new generations, they calm you in the present in a lively, healthy way and above all with a perspective towards the future, which is something that for my generation does not it is absolutely obvious, but we must not rob this present. We cannot be thieves to take something home, we must always think about the world of common music together and in any case try to give everyone their own contribution with their own interests.

We often hear that we need to “put music at the centre”. But music is part of a system that often inevitably places it aside or surrounds it with posts, videos, performances, images, etc. Can music be put at the centre, and how?

Yes: I believe I do it with a fairly significant consistency, passion and even sadism. It’s not really difficult, just don’t get addicted to the madness of these times and respect the intelligence of the public. Allowing a modicum of chaos to dominate what happens, allowing the unexpected to amaze you. I think I can tell the younger generation that it’s absolutely possible.