Cremonini praises Grignani: “He influenced my writing”
Taking the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the album “Destinazione Paradiso”, the first studio work originally published by Gianluca Grignani in February 1995, Cesare Cremonini shared on Instagram a long message praising the colleague and highlighting how much it influenced him.
“‘Destinazione Paradiso’ turns thirty and we must pay homage to an author and a musician who stopped time in the mid-nineties with evergreens that would be enough for anyone to receive long applause of gratitude”: this is how the long praise of the Bolognese singer-songwriter towards the Milanese musician begins. In his message, Cremonini then underlined:
“As far as I’m concerned, Gianluca Grignani or Gianluca, depending on the moment, influenced my adolescence in a concrete way in the writing of songs”.
The former Lùnapop has thus moved on to mention some “very important” Grignani songs for his historyboth referring to the adventure with the “50 Special” group and to his solo career. The first example comes related to “Dear Maggie” from “Squérez?”, Lùnapop’s only album, released on November 30, 1999. In reference to the song, Cremonini wrote: “For those who know what we’re talking about when we say Lùnapop, it has felt the influence of ‘Falco a mezzo’ more than any other song of mine“. He continued: “‘Silvia are you sleeping’, still Lùnapop, would never have been born if Gianluca had not created ‘The plastic factory’ and in particular that masterpiece which is ‘The hallucination‘”.
Moving on to his solo discography, the 45-year-old singer-songwriter originally from Bologna gave the examples of “A thousand galaxies” And “And instead it’s you”, from his first solo album “Bagus” in 2002 to narrate that “they wouldn’t have found a soft cushion of minor chords to move around in without the ones he stuck in his fighter songs on the acoustic guitar. And then the Beatles, who for a certain period could be heard in the background.” He continued: “AlsoSilent Moment‘ And ‘The clown‘ which is one of my lesser known songs (but most important for all of you who have been here forever) has its influences in the creation of bridges(‘But basically I’m fine here….’) and in the vocal timbre which I had eaten in large bites and digested during the endless days of studying at high school when, to reach Pianoro, a small almost mountain town outside Bologna, I spent forty minutes a day sitting on bus 46 towards Tuscany. I looked out and dreamed like I always have.”
Cesare Cremonini finally concluded the post by writing:
“Thank you Gianluca. I was struck by a phrase of yours I read in an interview a few years ago. ‘Sometimes an artist just needs a hug’. Sometimes the wrong path is the most enlightened.”
Last December 5th Gianluca Grignani published an edition celebrating the thirty years of his first album, “Destinazione Paradiso”, published in February 1995 at the same time as his participation in the Sanremo festival in the Nuove Proposte section where he obtained sixth position in the final ranking with the song “Destinazione Paradiso”.
