March 8: eight women sung by Claudio Baglioni
LADY LIA
Music by Claudio Baglioni and Carlo Scartocci, words by Claudio Baglioni
The song closes the very first album by debutant Claudio Baglioni, sent to stores by RCA in September 1970. It tells of a woman who deals with feelings of guilt after having cheated on her husband: “Mrs. Lia tonight / you're with your husband / don't worry, he doesn't know / he doesn't know that you betrayed him / but tonight that you understood / that you love only him / you feel that you've made too many mistakes now”. “'Signora Lia', one of my first successes, was actually titled 'Signora Lai' – Baglioni will tell – I was about to record the audition in the studio at RCA in Rome. The technicians in the control room wore white coats and a pin with their name. As I was about to start I saw that the head of the sound engineers' surname was Lai. And my song was all about Mrs. Lai's marital infidelity. Fearing that I would ruin her career, I suddenly decided to change.”
THIS LITTLE BIG LOVE
Music by Claudio Baglioni and Antonio Coggio, words by Claudio Baglioni
Universally recognized as one of the most significant and important songs of Claudio Baglioni's career and at the same time as a classic of Italian pop music – at the 1985 Sanremo Festival he received the “song of the century” award – it is inspired by Claudio's love story Baglioni with his girlfriend at the time, then his wife, Paola Massari. It was the latter herself, years after the release of the song, who revealed that she was the mysterious girl with the “fine t-shirt” with “that childish look” who was the protagonist of the song.
AND YOU
Music by Claudio Baglioni and Antonio Coggio, words by Claudio Baglioni
Paola Massari herself could be the female protagonist of the title track of the album that Baglioni released two years after ” Questo piccolo grande amore “, in 1974. There they talked about kisses with salty lips and making love down by the lighthouse, a setting that also returns in “E tu”: “Snuggled up listening to the sea, how long have we been without saying a word”, sings Baglioni. Who describes his woman with great tenderness: “And you, made of looks and you / and naive smiles, you”.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
Music by Claudio Baglioni and Antonio Coggio, words by Claudio Baglioni.
In the title track of his sixth album, published in 1975, a concept on the theme of waiting (the album opens with “Aspettire” and ends with the same “Sabato afternoon” – inside there is also “Lampada Osram”, which listening to it again after a few decades reveals an ante-litteram indie Baglioni: the lamp in question was the one under which Roman boys used to meet in the Termini Station area), it speaks with a tragicomic tone about a girl who gives the boy the boot after a week-long wait: “Little sparrow, don't go away / in your eyes the sun is already dying / sorry if it's a bit of my fault / if I don't know how to keep you here again”.
ALONE
Music and words by Claudio Baglioni
Among the most poignant songs ever written by Claudio Baglioni, the one that gives the title to the 1977 album describes the precise moment in which two engaged couples look into each other's eyes and understand that their relationship has come to an end. The decision to end her relationship is made by her, who tells him to continue to love him and suggests that he take care of himself without throwing himself away. Who knows, the girl whose scarf is blown by the wind (“'Let everything be like this' / and the wind flew on your scarf / you had already taken with you / your hands, your evenings, your joy”, sings Baglioni) is not a distant relative of the one sung three years earlier by De Gregori whose fur collar was ruffled by the same wind.
EAST GIRLS
Music and words by Claudio Baglioni
“The girls from the East” are the ones Baglioni met when, at just nineteen, in 1970 he was sent by RCA to participate in an international pop music festival near Gdansk, and was hired for a series of concerts. It will take a few years to process those memories and those reflections into music: the local women known in that experience become the muses of this “Girls of the East” in 1981, the year of the best seller “Strada fare”: “I saw them / in the evenings when the factories and streets are closed / vague smiles of anticipation on their lips and who knows what / writing their fantasies on the frozen glass / poor beautiful women in love with love and life”.
LADY OF THE DARK HOURS
Music and words by Claudio Baglioni
The one described by Baglioni in this song contained in the epic, double album “Oltre”, published in 1990, considered one of his masterpieces, is an unknown figure: a young girl who lives in the night, perhaps coming from a tropical country, who to prove to man a sinful desire to possess it. “I would suck you for hours and more / chocolate in my mouth / without ever swallowing you,” sings Baglioni.
SHE SHE SHE SHE
Music and words by Claudio Baglioni
Contained in the latest album “In questo storia che è mia”, the seventeenth of Claudio Baglioni's career, dated 2020, the song is a passionate dedication to a woman who is not better defined, who seems like a ghost: she is there and not there is. “A portrait placed sideways / now it's all there is of her / the cell phone will have been lost / it won't vibrate anymore if it's not her / the guitar lying on the sofa / remains forgotten without her / the thousand sheets scattered on the shelf / where she is written a thousand times”, sings Claudio Baglioni in the verses of the song.
(Bonus tracks) A THOUSAND DAYS OF YOU AND ME
Music and words by Claudio Baglioni
Among the most popular songs of the Roman singer-songwriter, “Mille giorni di te e di me”, contained in “Oltre”, tells the story of the end of a love story. But in describing the story that has come to an end, retracing its stages, Baglioni here proves to be very good at reconstructing with his verses the profile of the woman the song talks about, so powerful as to upset the life of the man who writes, who sings, who remember: “Whoever wants me after you / will take your wardrobe / and that mess / that you left in my papers / leaving like this / like our first scene”. “It's a song that comes from the idea that falling in love, true love, often arises when love is over. It is a song that in its final phase became more complete and that was born precisely from the fact that in my opinion a man, when he meets a woman and truly falls in love, tries to hide in her and then to hide herself – therefore her shell – in the eyes of the world. In my opinion, that is the moment in which a man truly falls in love – Baglioni will tell us – practically the whole song is autobiographical, but with that taste for autobiography that artists have when putting together different biographies, that is, creating a network through which let it also be mysterious to enter. There is a verse, in particular, that says “Whoever comes after you will breathe your smell thinking it is mine”: and this is a verse that I am particularly fond of because I think that memory has a smell, the the absence of people is still measured by their scent”.
