In 2025, indie is officially (already) stuff for nostalgics
«How many times have you seen happiness leave / and 2017, you know, will not return», he sings Gazelles in the first lines of “We don’t”, the single – just released – which anticipates his new album “Indi”, written like this. He presented it as a “homecoming” and it is no coincidence that in “Noi no” he mentions 2017: it was the year he debuted with “Superbattito”the album of “Quella te”, “Zucchero filato” and “Nmrpm”, the hits that allowed him to carve out a place of his own in the nascent Italian singer-songwriter scene of those years, that circuit that for convenience some renamed “indie pop”to underline how behind it there were not multinational record companies but small independent labels – Bomba Dischi and 42 Records in Rome, Maciste Dischi in Milan – which had cultivated those talents that started “from the bottom” and
exploded thanks to word of mouth on streaming platforms and social media. Which then, when you think about it, was nascent, in 2017 it was no longer so. “Mainstream” Of Calcuttathe album of “Cosa mi manchi a fare”, had been released a year and a half earlier and with “Oroscopo”, produced by Takagi & Ketra, the same hitmakers behind “Roma-Bangkok” by Giusy Ferreri and Baby K (in short , a not exactly alternative rock pedigree), had won a Gold Record: with anthems such as “Milano”, “Limonata”, “Frosinone”, “Del verde” the Latina singer-songwriter had thrown open the doors of the independent circuit venues, from the Monk in Rome to the Estragon in Bologna, to 17-18 year old girls. The beginning of a revolution that in a matter of months would have shuffled the cards on the table of Italian discography, contributing significantly to the generational change of Italian pop.
As the tenth anniversary of “Mainstream” itself approaches, which will fall next November, Indie is officially (already) stuff for nostalgics, of which few traces remain The “stickers on helmets” that Gazzelle talks about in “Noi no”, for example, while he is preparing to perform for the first time in his career at the Circus Maximus (on 7 June), he who at the beginning didn’t even want to be seen .
In the first photos posted on social media and released to the media, his face was blurred and everything that was known about him was summarized in a few lines: «Gazzelle is from Rome. Sunglasses, dark circles alone. Ginger and cotton candy. Loves torn in half, with the dirty sweatshirt from the night before. Sexy pop.” “Superbattito” was released in March 2017 and two months later.Carl Brave and Franco126 they published their “Polaroids”: two records destined to act as a soundtrack to the daily life of twenty-year-olds, who were no longer reflected in the glossy loves sung by the protagonists of Italian pop, that of the talent show scene, but were looking for cruder, more authentic, truer stories. Like those of Coezfor example, which ended up in the cauldron of indie pop when it chose Niccolo Contessathe putative father of the scene, produced much of that “I make a mess” which was the true best seller of Italian music of that year with 250 thousand copies sold, equal to 5 platinum records: “There is too much light inside the room / this advancing heat and I won’t sleep / and sorry if I don’t talk enough / but I have a dance school in my stomach”, sang the Roman rapper, with a romanticism all his own, in that “La musica non c’è” which won 8 platinum records.
A photo from the Calcutta club tour during the “Mainstream” era, 2016
«Why don’t you try doing a talent show? / I know / the general producer very well», sang Gazzelle in “Nmrpm”, mimicking the questions that his girlfriend’s father at the time asked him at dinner. But there were also those who fought the system from within, if we want to say so: in May 2017 Tommaso Paradiso had no problem bringing his Thegiornalisti to “Amici”after the two concerts in the sports halls of Rome and Milan with which the band, at the height of its success, celebrated the triumph of “Complemente sold out”.
There was a catchphrase in the drawer ready to be pulled out: that “.Riccione” which in fact scored a point of no return for the scenedestined to become the new pop. Niccolò Contessa had the readiness to disappear before the commercial drift of the circuit that he himself had helped to createwhen with I Cani in 2011 he began to talk about the fauna that populated the clubs of the Capitoline underground circuit, including «false nerds with nerd glasses, fashionable anorexics and out-of-fashion anorexics, bulimics who deal with fashion, nihilists with cocktails in the hands who dream of being famous like Vasco Brondi”: “Aurora”, Cani’s third album, was released in January 2016, a handful of weeks after Calcutta’s “Mainstream”, and nine years later it remains the last album released by Contessa.
Before Gazzelle, Tommaso Paradiso took care of reviving that unrepeatable period. When a year and a half ago the former frontman of Thegiornalisti, who found themselves in front of a dead end right at the Circo Massimo in September 2019 (a few days after the performance the singer-songwriter announced his solo breakthrough, effectively marking the end of trio), published the video clip of “Overwhelming ice blue”, aimed precisely at the nostalgia effect: the clip was a sort of “how we were” that brought together images of the concerts of the “Completamente” trio and those of the video clips of the hits that between 2016 and 2019 brought Paradiso and his companions to the roof of Italian music.
«.Because nothing really dies / deep down you know it too / we will always live inside a song / pushed to infinity in a fragment», he sang. And Carl Brave and Franco126 also enjoyed playing with nostalgia in some way, as at the end of the long tour linked to “Polaroid” they took two different and apparently irreconcilable paths: «It was a beautiful adventure, but everything has its own time and the best films don’t have a sequel”, commented the first. Last September, however, the two got pinched together backstage at a Gemello concert, while chatting and joking like old times: a lot (or a little) was enough for the clip to go viral on TikTok, (re)kindling fans’ hopes of seeing them together again on stage soon.
Tommaso Paradiso during the first concert of Thegiornalisti at the Forum in Assago, in 2017
There are those who have sensed that they can somehow achieve that nostalgia monetize. Like the organizers of Teara traveling festival born at the end of 2021 in Bologna to «celebrate Italian indie music and the need for authentic connection». The concept is simple: it is «an evening to cry and dance to the songs of Coez, Gazzelle, Frah Quintale, Calcutta, Pinguini Tattici Nucleari» and the other protagonists of that two-year period. And it is no coincidence that it is one of the most successful live formats of recent years. In the end, beyond fashions and poses, what remains are the songs.
