“Easy girls” and other stories: Cesare Cremonini in a playlist

“‘Ragazze facile’ affects the precise moment in which a man takes off his mask. Easy girls don’t exist, they are ghosts of the mind, alibis that chase him until the moment he performs the most revolutionary and important act: finding the courage to truly love. ‘Alaska Baby’ had found his centre”: this is how Cesare Cremonini describes his new single, just released, the fifth – after “Ora che non ho più te”, “San Luca”, “Nonostante tutto” and “Alaska Baby” – taken from the album “Alaska Baby” released a year ago. Musically, the song – also present in a live version in “Cremonini Live 25”, the live album just released – is a ballad with a glam flavour, recorded by the former Lunapop together with Mike Garson, a pianist who collaborated with David Bowie in the early ’70s and who shaped the atmosphere of “Aladdin Sane”: “There must be a danger, an adventure in making a record, especially in a moment like this in which technology allows us to speed up the entire creative process. The meeting between great artistic personalities, different cultures and sensibilities that have built the world allows me to challenge the present. Mike is capable of taking music into mysterious and fascinating territories with his talent”, said Cremonini about the collaboration. But how does “Girls Easy” represent the center, by definition of the Bolognese singer-songwriter, of “Alaska Baby”? The song represents the heart of the personal and artistic journey undertaken by Cremonini before the genesis of the album, then told through the songs of the same album, and represents a leap in the singer-songwriter journey of the Bolognese musician, retraced in the playlist which you find below and which you can listen to by clicking on “play“.

“I wrote this song in a few minutes on the piano, but it took me forever to find it. I was asked to perform the most disarming and revolutionary act for a man: finding the courage to love and show oneself vulnerable. While I was trying to blow away with the usual lightness all the ashes of that extinguished fire, I realized that something was collapsing inside me and I could no longer linger”, says Cremonini in this regard. And again: “‘Easy Girls’ was the explosion that broke the dam. We were reborn together, her and I. It is only by recognizing our weaknesses, calling them by name, that we can open a profound reflection on a theme that affects us closely: the courage to take the risk of loving.”

The video for the song, directed by Greg Williams, is shot in an autumnal and rainy London and tells of the appearance of emotional hallucinations caused by a separation with a loved one. The black and white and the photography create a cinematic atmosphere of times gone by, connected with the feelings expressed in the song, also making this new chapter by Cremonini an “instant classic” that adds to his artistic production.