Gianni Togni: “It’s useless to repeat ourselves: we must move forward”
Gianni Togni in the 80s he accustomed us to churning out one success after another, after starting his career as a supporter of the Pooh. That decade was certainly the most fertile in fame for the Roman singer-songwriter, but his career, albeit at a slow pace, never stopped. Today, on his 68th birthday, we celebrate him by proposing the reading of the review of his latest album, “Extraordinary edition”released no later than a couple of months ago and of which he says: “This album must be listened to without thinking about my past, otherwise the whole game falls apart”.
He was indie before anyone else, when in the 80s he churned out songs one after another with which he tried to change the language of pop of that period, from “Luna” to “Giulia”, developing a style that would be rediscovered in one way or another by the generation of the 2010s. From the indie of recent years, now, Gianni Togni, recovers the figure, that tendency to put everyday life into music without too many pretensions. For the lyrics of the songs of “Edizione straordinarie”, his new album, the sixteenth of his career, the 67-year-old Roman singer-songwriter was inspired by daily news and true stories that dominated the media between 2021 and 2023.
Each song is dedicated to characters from true stories: the initial inspiration came from reading about various topics in the newspapers, ranging from sports to animals and the environment, from art to travel, from love to health, from interviews with the character in question to street life. The musical compositions, together with the arrangements and sounds, will be very different from each other when listening to the album as a whole, but this is an artistic choice made to underline the uniqueness of each theme sung.
“I started composing, writing and going to the recording studio for ‘Edizione straordinari’ in 2021 – says Togni – and I already had the general idea of the album in mind. The ideas for the lyrics of each song were inspired by articles published in newspapers or by watching the news on TV, while for the arrangements of the various songs I tried to create big differences without thinking about my musical past, since I don’t like repeating myself. For me, the sound quality of a record is very important and I believe that analog recordings of all the instruments help to obtain a better final result, even if it takes a lot of patience and more time. In the lyrics, written together with Alessio Bonomo, there was just as much attention and some songs have undergone changes or refinements several times”.
All the tracks on the album were recorded in analog and then mixed with digital synchronization. Recording, mixing and mastering were handled by Massimiliano Rosati. The transfer for vinyl production was handled by Alessandro “Gengy” Di Guglielmo: “One of my records costs much more than average – he said in our interview – “I also do it for myself.
I like quality. I listen to music with a proper system, as a maniacal vinyl collector. I pressed this record in 140 grams, instead of 180, because I realized that these forty grams less make the record less noisy. I do it because when I buy a vinyl record, I expect it to sound good”.
“Edizione straordinarie” is an album that, the artist suggests, “should be listened to without thinking about my past, otherwise the whole game falls apart, because artists change, they evolve. Take Paul Simon. At a certain point he discovered African rhythms and began to make albums that were completely different from what the public expected from him, taking his own path. There’s no point in repeating ourselves: we have to move forward”.
