Fargetta: “Today's pop? In the end there will be few things left.”

“Anyone today has the ability to compose and record in front of a computer. Spotify here, Spotify there. But then we have to stay. It can tell you well if you get a hit, but you have to give continuity to your career”, says Mario Fargetta, simply Fargetta to his friends, one of the DJs best known and loved by the general public. Legend of Italian dance music of the 90s and member of the all-star team DeejayTime – composed together with Molella, Prezioso and Albertino, with whom he hosts every day on m2o, 1.7 million listeners a day in 2023, the program “Albertino Everyday”: the four will be on tour on the stages of Italian festivals starting from June 21st and throughout the summer – he is the author and producer of many of the pieces that have made the history of the genre, from “The music is movin' ” to “This time (Sexy night)”, passing through “I will rise again”, “The beat of Green”, “Goot times” and “Shining star”. As a remixer he transformed Italian songs by Adriano Celentano, Jovanotti, 883, Fiorello, Articolo 31, Lucio Dalla, Raf, Paola and Chiara into dance versions. After “In your eyes”, a remake of “Tu mi hai understanding” by Madame and Sfera Ebbasta which reached over 3 million views on TikTok, under the pseudonym Get Far – which is clearly almost the exact anagram of her surname – Fargetta has just released together with his right-hand man LennyMendy and vocalist Kel a new version of “Children of the Stars”, Alan Sorrenti's evergreen originally released in 1977. Surprising.

Why “Children of the Stars”?

“Because thanks to TikTok, where it has become a trend, even kids have discovered it, including my daughter. She looked like a pimp (laughs). But it wasn't easy to do it again. The original version is a classic. This is not a remix: there are far too many, including house. It's a real remake: we tried not to use the ultra-well-known guitar riff. We partially succeeded: at the beginning it isn't there, but we left it in the background of the song, even if I didn't highlight it in the mix. And Kel, very talented, rewrote part of the text in English.”

How did you meet her?

“Thanks to the record label, Ego. I was surprised by the courage she had in revisiting the lyrics of such a well-known song.”

Did you let Alan Sorrenti listen to it?

“I didn't understand whether it reached him or not (laughs). She took care of the label. You wrote a masterpiece: 'Children of the Stars' was a piece that was already too far ahead at the time, in terms of sound and atmosphere. It has spanned almost fifty years of music history: it could come out tomorrow, as it always remains very fresh.”

Your partner Albertino says that the music going around today is “all a gigantic cover”. He is right?

“I speak as a producer: it would be better to create a new song rather than remake one from the past, but creating a new hit is not easy. And above all, it's not easy for it to become a hit. You might as well take inspiration from old songs either to make declared covers, but with new sounds, like I did, or to build new songs on top of them which however maintain elements already familiar to listeners”.

This is the case of sampling, which is now very overused.

“They seem like interesting operations to me. I'm not apocalyptic: young kids don't even know the old songs that inspire the new ones.”

How is Italian pop music doing?

“I think so. The artists all do gigantic numbers.”

And the quality?

“It's there and it's not there. I believe that in the end there will be few left: those who are really valuable.”

Is Italian music an export?

“It seems to me that we have made some great impressions at Eurovision recently. More generally, I think that there are many Italian artists who are proudly representing our local music outside national borders: Meduza comes to mind, true ambassadors of Italian dance in the world”.

How do you explain the revival of the 90s?

“It was an incredible decade, that. And unrepeatable. If I think of all the hits that came out in those years I shudder: they are songs that everyone knows when we play together with Albertino, Molella and Prezioso. And they put a smile on your face.”