Gianluca De Rubertis, a self-portrait playlist…
Born in Lecce on 14 November 1976, Gianluca De Rubertis turns 49 today (best wishes!). We asked him to… give himself a gift, choosing from his solo production (four LPs, an EP and some singles) post-Studiodavoli and post-Il Genio, the songs that he considers most significant and/or to which he is most fond, commenting on them. Here is your selection. Happy birthday!
THE VIOLENCE OF LIGHT
Song that I wrote with my soul in the dark, music is a lighthouse for the castaway.
ONLY ONE MOUTH
There are nights when you wander around, when it seems to you that Dostoevsky’s demons are greedily drinking from other people’s feelings; then you understand that they too are nothing but human, too human.
PANTELLERIA
Pantelleria is not an island, it is a continent. Every land, even the most boundless, meets the sea, and the sea that surrounds Pantelleria sets it as a jewel, a diadem in which you can lose the wisdom of love.
BEFORE YOUR HEART
This song marks the second collaboration with that miracle of a woman that is Amanda Lear. I wrote it for her, thinking about her, sensing her.
THE PELICAN
“You know that the older you get, the more distant memories emerge” says Battiato in “Mesopotamia”. He was right.
THE INTELLIGENCE OF PAIN
A music that was incomplete for months, a Joseph Haydn-like incipit orphaned of development, devoid of words; then the dawn brought me advice, pain is a sentient being, it dominates us and possesses us.
I GOODBYE
A noir and sincere nursery rhyme, those who play with words don’t play with words because words exist above all to be lied to.
DARK NIGHT
Another cathartic journey, the music really heals, the title sympathizes (and not even a little) with “the dark night of the soul” by John of the Cross (San Juan de la Cruz)
UNDER YOUR SKIRT
“I remember the skirts as cloth domes and they hid a mystery”, I allow myself to self-quote: this phrase is taken from the lyrics of a song that is in this same playlist (IL PELLICANO)
MAGNIFICENT NIGHT
The only cover on this list, I translated and adapted from the Spanish “MI GRAN NOCHE” by Salvatore Adamo, a song made famous in Spain by the legendary Raphael (a equivalent of our Massimo Ranieri for the Spanish). In this version in the company of my friend and great singer-songwriter Mauro Ermanno Giovanardi.
