Despite everything, Bugo continues to dance as he pleases
On February 7, 2020 it was published “Cristian Bugatti”the album by Bugo released in conjunction with his participation in the Sanremo festival that year. A participation that went down in history due to the disqualification caused by his adventure companion Morgan who changed the words of the text of “Sincere” – song with which the two were competing – therefore decreeing their exclusion. That can be considered the last album of unreleased songs by the musician born in Rho because the album released the following year, “Bugatti Cristian” (laws here is the review), was a re-edition with the addition of five previously unreleased songs. While waiting for the next record release of Bugo Let’s reread our review of “Cristian Bugatti”.
He wanted to be a singer of English songs, so no one would understand what he was saying. Being an alcoholic, destroying dressing rooms, dressing badly and always having a crisis. Instead, at the age of 46, Bugo arrived on the most institutional stage of Italian music, that of the Ariston Theatre, competing – for the first time – at the Sanremo Festival. An important milestone for the singer-songwriter from Lombardy (but Piedmontese by adoption), who arrived twenty years after his debut album “La prima gratita”.
We all know how it ended: the argument with Morgan, with whom Bugo had decided to share the Sanremo experience, took on the proportions of an artistic fratricide which caused the duo to be disqualified from the race. However, on the other hand, he allowed the voice of “Io mi rompo i coglioni” to gain that “mainstream” popularity that it didn’t have before the Festival, he who has always been considered the best-known exponent among the lesser-known of the Italian independent rock scene of 2000s. The twenty-year friendship with the former leader of Bluvertigo went to waste, while the partnership between the two on “Sincero” lives on in Bugo’s new album, simply titled “Cristian Bugatti” (this is his real name).
In the nine songs contained in the album, which comes four years after the previous “No scale to climb” and two years after the “RockBugo” collection, Bugatti tells the story of the mid-life crisis of a rocker like him, who left the province of Novara to pursue his dreams of rock’n’roll, passed through MTV (in the early 2000s, ending up there meant turning one’s career around) and to the upper floors of the majors’ offices (in 2002 “Dal lofai al cisei” was released, the first album for a multinational after the debut as an independent), returned to his rock origins when he understood that the “mainstream” was not for him, managed to set foot on the most famous stage of Italian “pop” music and there became – through no fault of his own – the protagonist of that circus that it’s the Sanremo Festival.
“Cristian Bugatti” sounds like a pop record.
A pop record like a record by Biagio Antonacci or Ermal Meta (with whom Bugo, in addition to sharing the label, duets in “Mi manca”). The production is by Simone Bertolotti and Andrea Bonomo, former collaborators of – among others – Marco Mengoni, Francesco Renga, Laura Pausini, Paola Turci and Giusy Ferreri, who helped the singer-songwriter to put aside the raw sounds of his previous works and to embrace rounder and straighter sounds, giving Bugo’s songs that touch of radio play that they didn’t have before. However, without giving up those who have always been the singer-songwriter’s main references, above all the Vasco of the 80s (“Stupido eh?”) and Battisti (who is also mentioned in “Un alieno”).
With the irony and sarcasm that have always characterized his writing, Bugo sings about his daily life: that of someone who, at almost fifty years old, comes out of his lair and tries to adapt to the world out there, between bizarre tweets, stories on Instagram with sunglasses (“As I seem to”), who goes to friends’ birthdays and talks about money and other people’s children (“Mi miss”), but who is basically better off lying on the sofa watching Festivalbar reruns and surfing about sadness with olives and champagne (“An Alien”). He will never be the singer of English songs that he dreamed of being when he recorded demos with his Quaxo – his first band – inspired by Nirvana, grunge and American rock, but he has finally entered “the right circle”. And despite everything, he continues to dance as he pleases.