Ginevra: “I found myself angry”
Calling it a concept album is incorrect, yet the songs from Ginevra’s latest album have a very specific identity. They are linked by a central theme, that of female identity in all its facets, as a search for oneself and as a gaze on the world. Tracks that move between pop, electronic and songwriting and which Ginevra Lubrano, 31 years old, from Turin and based in Milan, defines “as a great path of growth and evolution”.
Her new album comes out on January 24th via Asian Fake/Sony Music, it is titled “Femina”, like the essay by art historian Janina Ramirez: “FEMINA – History of the Middle Ages through the women who have been erased”. The restitution is traces that come from a long process of listening and observation: «There is a lot of research into texts, films, albums by other artists who have inspired me. Just as that essay did: it echoed within me while I was writing the single manifesto of this latest work of mine, “Femina” indeed.” “You undress me with your eyes. And you shoot me because I’m Femina“, sings Ginevra, exposing herself on a delicate topic such as violence against women, “as I had never done before”, she says. «I found myself angry, perhaps because of the news. And anger turned into a driving force, which allowed me to talk about myself in a more visceral and authentic way.”
Is it a feminist album? «It’s a record that represents my way of being female, of being a woman, I don’t know if it’s the vision that represents everyone. The need was to express myself 100%, even if it was uncomfortable. From this point of view I can say that it is also an activist album. True awareness and true rebellion is being completely yourself, in the society I live in, in my work, in what I do. I would like to leave it to others to define what they think and how they experience this album. For me it’s an important job, there’s a lot of me in it.”
Considered one of the most promising voices of her generation, Ginevra graduated in singing from the CPM Music Institute in Milan. Author of the song “Glicine” which Noemi brought to Sanremo in 2021, the following year she took to the stage at the Ariston as a guest of La Representative di Lista. In 2023 he released the single “Maledetta desire for happiness” with Motta. His first album is titled “Diamante” and is from 2022.
In this new production, curated by Francesco Fugazza (aka Fugazza), Marco Fugazza (Suorcristona) and Domenico Fizio, three close collaborators of the artist, it moves between played instruments, dry and purposely imperfect voices, many guitars, bass and drums with sounds that take you back to the late nineties and two thousand.
«I wanted to arrive in a more direct, less ethereal way: I felt the need to be as unfiltered as possible, even from a textual point of view». Sing for her, sing to the women in her life, to those she doesn’t know, to those like her who fight every day for a more equal society. He recounts the “emotional carousel” of his thirty years, divided between society’s expectations and its real needs, between electrifying moments and the pleasure of rediscovering the little things. Talks about relationships and compromises in “Verità”, sung with Colombre, “Did you bring what you are to leave? Like the truth…” .
Not a concept album, we were saying, but certainly a work that presents itself with a precise imagery. Not just from a sound point of view. Ginevra decided to accompany each individual with a photograph (the shots, like the one illustrating this interview, are Giulia di Gatti and are creatively directed by Aurora Rossa Manni). «Images that represent me very well. Within each of them there is an element of my history, of my family, many symbols that create a link with the songs.” A journey that she defines as «authentic, feminine, disruptive», where the “River Girl”, (title of the second track of this work), follows her instinct and her nature, following her own rules. “It wasn’t what you dreamed for me, but the current is too strong. Milan is full of sirens and I have seen them. And I swear they have short legs. The moment before I sleep, I don’t regret my choices. And you don’t have to worry about me. I have scales instead of skin“.
