Erica Mou: “I love the song form but in case I save the word”

Erica Mou with “Circles” arrives at the seventh album of his career, a career full of activities and awards from different fields, from Sanremo Festival up to more specific demonstrations on songwriting, the terrain on which the Apulian singer moves.

And saying “singer” or singer-songwriter is limiting because Erica is also a writer of novels (she has two under her belt), she is a theater and film actress, fields of entertainment (plus television) for which she has also written music, receiving un attention from professionals is greater than the notoriety of Erica, who is certainly not a popular character among the general public, but rather among those who passionately follow the songwriting.

A few months after the novel (“One thing for which you will hate me”, Fandango books) the new album arrives. “Circles” is a collection of 11 intense tracks which revolve around a concept, an idea and “tell” it from different perspectives: a record to be enjoyed but also to “listen”.

Here’s what she herself explained to us in this interview

In presenting “Circles” you talk about circularity: how do you explainthis concept, which also returns in the title of the album itself?

It’s a concept born, as in every album, while I was working on it, because I believe that more or less in the same period one has a theme to develop which is expressed in a different way.

As the songs are lined up and the record is being made, you actually realize what you were talking about. And I realized that I was finding myself in a point where perhaps I had already been many years before, but this return finds me completely different. The concept is that time, in my opinion, is a consequentiality of events that you cannot put on a line, it is a tangle of things that often return similar, but upon their return they find you changed. For this record I wrote many stories that somehow talk about doing identical things but in totally different ways, because you are different. This is a symmetry present in “Mother”, the song that opens the album, because I imagine meeting my mother the day I was born, so as if her last breath that I heard could dialogue with my first breath that she heard. From here on all the songs have affinity with this theme, such as “Accomplices”, which tells us that we left a city and returned to the same city, but to new people. In almost all the pieces there is this concept of return, of rebirth.

So the tracklist, the order of the songs is not random?

No, it’s not, it follows both a thematic and musical progression. Let’s say that I have a somewhat romantic vision in thinking that, at the end of 2024, a person will press the “play” button and listen to the whole album in a row; but I tried to create a path of both theme and sound.

Why do you say it will be difficult for anyone to listen to a record from start to finish? In my opinion, someone who listens to your music is also looking for this. Or are you not so confident?

No, no, I believe very much in human beings and the surprise is always around the corner, but obviously the function of music is different, making a record that has a theme that unites the songs is perhaps a little old-fashioned, but I am a twentieth century woman (laughs).

So can we call it a concept album in some way? But different themes that revolve around the same topic?

Well yes, in some ways it is. Circularity is the master, then “Cerchi” is also an entry of the verb to seek, so I tried.

How personal is this album?

However, my previous six albums also had a concept that united them and all were extremely personal. I’m also presenting my new novel and many people ask me how difficult it was to write it, because it’s an extremely personal story, where the characters are called like me or members of my family, so it’s really our story; then clearly it is also literature, but it is my story. Songs are this too, then not everything is always so straightforward, but it’s an exercise I’ve been doing for some time. In the end, even when it doesn’t seem like it’s talking about me, somehow I do.

You also say that the word is central. How important is the word in the overall economy of a song?

Let’s say 51%. I believe that the challenge of every songwriter is to try to make the music and the words embrace each other as much as possible, to make them revolve one inside the other. I never write lyrics or music alone. When I compose I always have the instrument in hand and the words are already starting to arrive, I try to make them come together by immediately finding music for them. This is a discussion that I also had with Caterina Caselli, when I worked with her, because I have always realized that if there is a fight and one of the two has to succumb, I always try to safeguard the word, here is that 1% in more. I realize that I love music very much, but never as much as I love the song as a form, because I like the sound that words have and so they take on the value of a musical instrument.

Do you see a relationship between the literal content of the song and its musical part? That is, do hard lyrics require hard music or vice versa?

Well no, not this.

You can also play tackle, obviously. “Azzurro” by Paolo Conte and Vito Pallavicini tells us that it can be done. When there is a song that has lyrics of crazy yearning on such light-hearted and happy music, it arrives in a different way, it follows other paths. If I were to give you an example from recent times, which is still twenty-one years ago, when Caparezza published “Fuori dal tunnel” I was a teenager, and I thought: “What magic he’s doing!”. He’s saying something very harsh about cheerful music like when Caparezza always wrote “Come and dance in Puglia”. There are many artists who have done this and have played with contrast. Within this album I think for example of the “Festa del Santo”, which is a very cheerful piece on a musical level, but surely the recipient of the song would not be so happy. One thing I love is realizing I’m dancing and crying at the same time. The other day at a presentation of the novel a reader told me that reading it was “devastating with a smile”. Sometimes it is right to underline, other times the complexity of what we feel also leads us to experiment with different, often opposite, colors within the same expressiveness.

What was the approach from a musical point of view on this album?

In April last year I kidnapped my musicians called Molla e Maximum Flavia taking them to a beautiful theater which is the Petrella of Longiano.

At the beginning they said: “Oh that’s nice, let’s go and do an artistic shoot”, but in reality it was an experience like in a tomato harvesting field under the sun in summer. We entered the theater early in the morning every day, I wanted us to experience everything together and that we were on a breathing stage, a place that had a history of live music, because we recorded this album as if it were a production without the many steps in the process of writing a record, in which from the moment the song is born to the moment you publish it, so many hands pass through it, so many turns of thought, that in the end you no longer remember what fire this spark came from. So I wanted something immediate and when we found a convincing solution it was the right one. All without going through the “I’ll do it on the computer, then I’ll do it again live” phase. No, we arranged and recorded continuously, fixing the ideas that came out, with a sense of truth, even a bit of rawness and spontaneity. This is a record that comes three years after the previous one, but I’ve been working on it for years.

But was the writing collective or yours?

The writing came first, it was mine. While we were arranging we also made decisions about the essence of the song, therefore removing parts, repeating parts, changing pieces of lyrics, but let’s say that there were many more songs, so also choosing those that we have, for now, discarded it’s a very strong artistic decision.

Oh well, then there’s a new album ready…

But that’s always the case. But what does waste mean? Because for example “Madre”, which is the song that opens this album and a focal piece, I had already written it at the time of “Nature”, the previous 2021 album; it could have been on that album, but it wasn’t its moment, in my opinion, so we removed it. It was also arranged differently, but it wasn’t the right time, it wasn’t the right dress, so sometimes it takes time.

How much has your music evolved over the years?

I can’t tell you this, it’s your job, you see it (laughs), but what I can definitely tell you is that as a human being I have evolved a lot, so I think this has an important reflection on the songs too.

Erica Mou singer, songwriter, writer, actress, but how do all these things combine?

They are things that combine and somehow complement each other and are all part of the same movement. The theater show I did with Concita de Gregorio, for example, in recent years, laid a lot of the foundations of what the songs on the previous album became. Again, the concept of this album is linked to the concept of my latest novel “One thing you will hate me for”. “Mother” is as if it were the soundtrack of the book, “Piccola vita” is a piece of the novel. In reality they are expressive ways of things that are part of the same movement. Among other things, the album talks about precisely this, about circularity. So I would be betraying myself if I told you something different, but I deeply think that these things are all connected to each other, otherwise I wouldn’t do them, otherwise I don’t think they would come from the same person.

Then on top of all this there is mother Erica. How do you reconcile motherhood with this job?

Definitely with a bit of stiff neck and sore feet.

How old is your daughter?

Zero, Bianca is ten months old.

She was born in January, the novel was born in September and the new album in November. So it was a year of births: three incredible joys. Obviously my daughter is in another category. I wanted to see if it was possible to do everything I love and I realize that it can be done with a certain degree of effort. I will take Bianca on tour, we do everything together, she travels with me, I dedicate all the time possible to her with a little help, every now and then from various people, first of all obviously her father, then there is my father or a babysitter, or friends or, if necessary, my musicians, everything is done. I like. In the end this is my life which is also made up of travel, of being in different places, with different people, doing different things, continuously, and therefore she is in my life and the two things must meet. It’s complex but also easy, I can’t explain it to you. We are in symbiosis, but how could we not be right now? It’s right that this is the case. And then. it’s done, I can’t tell you how. Many people tell me that I’m a bit reckless but this is the only life I know and this is also the one I offer her and it’s as if she had always been there.

The tour will start at the end of the month and you will start right from the Teatro di Longiano

Yes, now we are in the studio rehearsing, with the mat for Bianca to play on. We leave on November 29th and it’s a sort of restitution for the gratitude we have towards this beautiful place that hosted us and where the album was born. The next day (November 30th) we are at the auditorium in Rome which is a date that we all feel very strongly about, then I lived in Rome for many years, so I am happy to be back. Then on December 19th we have Bari, which is not my city, but is close to Bisceglie where I was born. And then we will do the theaters in Turin (10 January 2025) and Milan where we will conclude the first appointments on 11 January. This is a record that was born on stage and therefore its home will always be found live which is our home, I speak for myself, but also for my musicians. We will play the entire new album which is 11 short songs and in these days we are working on the setlist, to also make the transition between the songs from the repertoire and those from this album circular.