Claudio Baglioni: “Life is now” now “. Without nostalgia “

A new album or a new album, it would be said, citing the title of the song, “A new day or a new day”, which opened the Ellepì epochal of 1985. “Life is now, the dream is always”, The new version of the album that Forty years ago consecrated Claudio Baglioni as a pop icon, which became with 4.5 million copies sold The most successful album ever of Italian music is one and the other. The one that will come out tomorrow, four decades from the original, is a version of “Life is now” that It contains the same songs of 1985 but “entirely resonated and sung in the studio, live, with new arrangements”. A kolossal operation, the result of synergy with Sony Music Italy: «Instead of making Romanella, as they say in Rome, or giving it a remastered and away, I decided to redo the disc from scratch, reinciding and rearranged it. Everything was done in analogue, as was done many years ago, playing together with the musicians in the same study, at the same time », explains Baglioni. To enrich the 1985 disc tracklist there is also a unpublishedwhich is then unpublished is not: it is of “The dream is always“, Song that Iln songwriter of” This little great love “composed in the wake of” Life is now “and which included in the 1986 live “solo” album. Baglioni dusted him off, adding some to new verse: now he plays like the epilogue of the concept album that the artist imagined as the story of a whole day that represented all his life, looking at his Rome from above from the bar tables – now closed – the zodiac. ““The dream is always” was the hidden subtitle of “Life is now” (the title appeared in the retrocopertina of the original vinyl, editor’s note). That song remained in a sort of limbo. Now I recovered it, because it seemed to me it was already inside the fabric of the 1985 album“, explains. It will not be missing in the lineup of tour dedicated to the forty -year of the album, which will have a preview of September 27 in Lampedusawhere for years the Roman singer -songwriter has held his festival “O ‘Scià”, before the official departure scheduled for the summer 2026.

A colossal remake. Also in the format

The remake comes out in double vinyl in Gatefold package and 4 different formats, in CD and digital in Dolby Atmos (all available on the Sony Music Italy website). And in addition to the record project On June 18, a super deluxe boxes designed and made by Edizioni Curci in a limited edition of a thousand numbered copies will also be releasedwhich also includes the Artist’s book by Emiliano Ponzidefined by Baglioni’s entourage as “an excellence of the visual arts (Milanese but stationed in New York, collaborates with the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, publishing houses such as Feltrinelli and various companies, editor’s note)”: a refined “Coffee Table Book” in which The tables interpret and redesign the themes of “Life is now”, transforming the verses of the songs into images. «We worked on this project as was done at the time of the great record epic. And without Autoun, even if it would have been useful (laughs). I updated the sounds of this album. At the time, when I finished registering it, I thought it was horrendous. Time denied me. But this operation is not a monument to nostalgia: we wanted to underline the topicality of the original album»Comment Baglioni. Even visually we tried to recover a continuity between 1985 and 2025: The cover bears the signature of Toni Thorimbert, the same photographer who immortalized Baglioni for that of the original “Life is now”, which is mentioned. Except that this time behind the singer -songwriter there is no sky in Rome, but a mixer counter. And in the internal images of the Baglioni opening vinyl observes not the eternal city from above, as in the photo taken in 1985 by the hill of Monte Mario, where the bar that inspired the songs of “Life is now” stands, but a set of laws: “As in the 1985 album, Claudio looks at an imaginary city: the lights of the city have become the lights of the mixer”, says Thorimbert about the idea.

Production and the band: what changes compared to 1985

Luca Fantone, Sony Music Catalog Directorunderlines how muscle operation represents “A celebration of a methodology that represents us: the album was recorded live with musicians and technicians who have always worked at the same time and place, in the name of intermediation and not of disappointment». The original 1985 album was produced by Baglioni with arrangements by Celo Valli, recorded between Manor Studio by Oxford (where the Queen of Freddie Mercury had recorded their “A day at the Races”, the album of “Somebody to Love”, and Mike Oldfield his “Tubular Bells”) and the Town House in London. The parts of the London Symphony Orchestra were engraved at the Abbey Road Studios. The original sessions took parts musicians such as Stuart Elliott (drummer of the Alan Parsons Project), Mo Foster (bassist already alongside Ringo Starr, Phil Collins, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Sting), an still unknown Hans Zimmer (who ten years later he will win the Oscar with the music of “The Lion King” Ring the keyboards in groups such as the Ultravox, the Buggles and also the Krisma by Maurizio Arcieri and Christina Moser). And then the guitarist Phil Palmer, the percussionist Frank Ricotti, the drummer Peter Van Hooke. The new versions of the songs were always produced by Claudio Baglioni, but this time the arrangements bear the signature of his historic guitarist Paolo Gianolio. The processes have kept the Roman singer -songwriter from Forum Studios, Temple of Roman Music (is the engraving room founded in 1970 by Ennio Morricone, Armando Trovajoli, Luis Bacalov and Piero Piccioni from last October). The band that has joined him includes musicians who usually accompany Baglioni live like the drummer and percussionist Elio Rivagli, the bassist Mario Guarini, the pianist Roberto Pagani, the keyboardist Pio Spiriti, the saxophonists Alessandro Tomei and Franco Marinacci and the choristers Silvia Parile, Serena Bagozzi, Serena Corporal, Antonella Pepe and Rossella Ruini.

“Today there is less artistic and smarter in choices”

With the 1985 album Baglioni took away not a few pebbles from the shoes towards critics, showing everyone that he is not only the idol of the kids accused of excessiveness and cloyingness for writing Hit as “this little big love”, “And how are you?”, “Saturday afternoon” (as if it were a condemnation, having signed certain pieces, destined to become a timeless classics). For the first time, he set aside the “I” and spoke of the others, Incoming a new form of popular romanticism, accessible but not banal. Pop, in fact, but without being superficial. Intimate without being self -referential. “If I could rewrite such a job today? Perhaps today there is a less interesting around then. If there is crisis in all popular expression manifestations, it means that it is the subject to tell that it is less stimulating. There is no ability to describe in COMPASSO LARGO – reflects at forty years – we sing it and we play it, in short. There is less artisticity and more cunning in the choices».