Jovanotti: “I wondered: what music do I do now?”

Jovanotti proudly shows the cover of his new album – which portrays him in the “cheerful surgeon” version. That cover and the title “The human body” arrived even before the songs had a form: the reference is to the accident of summer 2023 who forced him to question everything: his music, but also his person And the relationship with his body, in fact.
Today, several operations later, Jovanotti is fine, but he used the songs to elaborate the trauma that “took away the thing I kept most”, as he sings in “Montecristo”. The result are 15 songs for the most straight and synthetic album of an artist who has always put “many lives inside one life”, even musically, even in the way of making them arrive. Produced by Dardust, from Michele Canova (with which he had not worked since 2015) and Filippo Nardelli (Gazzelle, Ligabue: it is the first time they work together), it is however a kaleidoscope of genres and sounds, from pop to urban music, to population Rock to the rarer ballads, who speak of fragility: a novelty for an artist who has always made vitality his main theme.
The album was presented last night at the Lirico Theater Giorgio Gaber in Milan with a show made of stories, videos, listening to full volume with Lorenzo dancing on stage, questions and a couple of live songs: “out of the dandy” in jazz handcuff version with I Four on Six (a tribute to the day of Remembrance) and “Great to fear” in acoustic version.
Rockol met Lorenzo in recent days for a chat on the album, on how the songs between Tiktok and platforms work today, on the comparison and clash with the new generations (“I was perceived as a novelty, and then, at a certain point, I have I stopped being “) and the tour: in March a tour starts in the buildings, which was originally scheduled for 2024:” I thought: let’s take a show as if we were the and street band or as if we were Prince and the Revolution, “he says With his enthusiasm – that has not changed and remains at the basis of everything he does.

“The human body” has the shape of a classic album: it is the first time that you return to this formed by “Oh, life!” of 2017. How was it born?

Even before there were the songs, I thought about the title and the cover. Almost like an apparition. So he could only become an album. Indeed, I left out a lot of ready -to -ready or almost ready pieces: for this, by precaution, volume 1 is written.
For me this is a family format: I grew up with the album. I didn’t do anything new, actually. If anything, I tried to experiment at other times, but this time it was all very natural.

The synthesis has never been your priority, but this is instead a very direct album, with the songs that go straight to the point. Did the stories, the themes of the album require this essentiality?

The song helps me in this sense. The song imposes the synthesis to you: it is an exercise. Then working with Dardust helped me a lot. He made me cut stanzas with the cleaver: we proceeded with the Machete. I had pieces with infinite stanzas, and he said: “No, we’re short, we’re short.” And in the end I enjoyed cutting and giving a more essential form to songs.

Today then the songs then the platforms require shorter songs …

Yes, look, I criticize the fact that now short songs are done, but then I also wait for it. I am a boy from the 80s/90s, the songs lasted 5-6 minutes, as “I think positive” or “Serenata rap”. Today, with those durations, you make a whole album. In the end, I also go to look for the synthesis.

A theme of different songs is the comparison with the digital environment, with social media. In this era in which everything is representation, how is credibility in music is found?

When you write a song, you just think about the song. I don’t think it can become a meme or that it is right for Tiktok. Those are things that the record company deals with.

How do you deal with writing then?

I do it as always, in the same way I did it in 1987: looking for a form. If then 15 seconds of a song become viral on Tiktok, that’s fine, but that’s another matter. I don’t look for jingles inside the songs, I don’t look for them anymore than I have always searched for it. For an own personal issue, I were born with advertising, then I was born with the slogans, I was born with the idea that the song must have in a title that is written on a shirt. It’s something I’ve always thought, it’s not new. The songs must contain slogans that you can slide from the songs.

Is it an automatic process or is it something you keep in mind while writing?

It is not a thought that has conditioned writing, because it is my way of being in the world. I grew up with the images, I don’t have a literary culture, I made it a little over time, but what nourishes my songs is more a visual culture, plus a slogan culture, of effect phrases, and therefore that I continued to do in the pieces.

Is this why your songs tend not to have a narrative structure, but to proceed in images?

The fact that I can’t be narrative in the pieces is something that I am sorry in some way. When I hear “pink mouth” or “Anna and Marco”, I say: “Listen to this piece, it’s a movie.” I live that thing there like a kind of festive frustration.

In addition to Dardust, “The human body” is produced by Michele Canova and Filippo Nardelli. A return and a novelty.

I hadn’t worked with Michele since 2015. We had done a lot together and we were tired. He was then starting his American adventure, I wanted to change, and so we moved away. But we never quarreled. When he returned to Italy two years ago, we were affected, just when I hurt myself. With Michele we also worked on other highlights which, however, remained out.

You and Dardust had already worked together, right?

Yes, only for a song, but we have known each other for years and we love each other. I have a great esteem for him. I like to write with musicians like him. Canova is more a sound engineer, a manufacturer in the classic sense: if he brings him an already written piece, he takes it to the maximum. Dardust, on the other hand, is an author, a composer.

They are two very different figures, producer and producer As they say today. What approach are you better?

With both: they are two different ways of working. Nardelli, on the other hand, represents another approach even more rock, more guitar.

Three producers representing the three souls of the disc: contemporary, pop and played, right?

Exact. I wanted to keep my foot in all three of these shoes. I also confronted myself with other young manufacturers, of the new scene, and I do not exclude to collaborate with them in the future. But yes, these are the three souls on the album.
The pieces with Dardust are the majority: it was the first with which I started working, on songs that I felt more urgent. Usually I arrive in the studio with ready -made texts, but this time I was willing to put your hand back to everything, even to the texts. The disc was done very quickly: it is as if the run -up had been very long, but then the very short jump.

Speaking of the texts: the main theme of this album seems to be human fragility, a theme that occurs in different songs. Is that so?

Yes, and also the trauma. This disc is a sort of therapy. I don’t want to impose my therapy to anyone, but I didn’t want to get stuck in trauma: I wanted to see what could become.

In “The great emotion” tells your fragility as an artist.

Do you think it lasted almost ten minutes! I told Dardust: “We record everything, then we cut, as if it were a movie.”

It is the first time you deal with this theme in such an open way, right?

Yes, because it is the first time that I live this fragility. It is not that I had removed it before, it is the first time that I compare myself with many aspects of life in recent years. Last but not least, the fact of having been perceived as a novelty, and then, at a certain point, no longer be.

How do you live the comparison with the new musical generations that dominate the rankings?

The scene has completely changed. I look at the streaming rankings and I don’t know almost anyone. I can’t even remember the names, perhaps for age or because they are written with numbers and punctuation …
But it is not necessarily evil. This profession is done to the end. I think of the bluesmen, Keith Richards, or Nick Cave, who made an amazing album.

All artists who confronted each other with the age who passes …

In this album I asked myself: “What music do I do now?” Once De André said, “You have to be credible when you write songs.” I thought: “Yes, but you must also be a little incredible.” Do something that I clear, who surprise, right?

How did you translate these ideas into songs?

I tried to shape emotions, working on rarer and not very popular atmospheres by me. I was not ashamed of romanticism or the most popular emotions.

From March you will be in Palazzetti. How do you bring this album live?

I will not do much stuff on the album, only 4 pieces, I tried: it comes out too close to the tour. I want to make a feston, I want to entertain people even by doing things I didn’t do in Jova Beach Party, which was a rave. I will do the great successes: big, precisely because they sold a lot and people sing them. And I also.

What do you build around the songs?

Ah, you will see, it’s fantastic, although it is very traditional, which is an adjective that I don’t use often. First I thought about putting the catwalks and those things there. Then I thought: let’s take a show as if we were the and street band or as if we were Prince and the Revolution. Then around the end of the end: the scenic system is really cool: we are working with those of Tomorrowland. In reality, I designed the tour before the accident, then we stopped for a year, but it was already a little set up, even the band, which waited for me.

A new band …

We are 14: winds, choirs, two percussion, drums, Adriano Viterbini on guitar. Musically the most beautiful concert you have ever heard in Italy, in my opinion.