The great voice of Laura Pausini

Twenty years ago, on October 22, 2004, Laura Pausini published “Stay listening” his eighth studio album. A record that was also released in Spanish with the title “Escucha” and has sold over five million copies worldwide. Below is the review of the album he wrote for us Paola Maraone.

The problem is that this one doesn’t sing, it screams, and frankly it can’t stand it anymore. It may also be the album in which he had to vent his anger, sing his pain, exorcise his bad luck or whatever, but in short, you can’t – you really can’t – always follow the same pattern: verse & melody, scream , chorus, scream, end. Laura, we understand that you have a great voice, but we’re not in an oratory competition here, and this, which should be your album of maturity, seems more like a shouted shopping list than anything else. Enough!

Change register, because we can’t follow you anymore. Actually, no, stay yourself: deep down this is probably your way of making music, and – equally deep down – perhaps it’s fine like this, because otherwise your resounding success, your selling – how insistent, how boring – couldn’t be explained. – every time millions of records as if they were peanuts when there are musicians who thank God if they manage to sell 5000 copies, your being loved, or rather adored, or rather idolized all over the world by hordes of screaming and joyful fans like you and, of course, more and more enthusiastic.

Those same fans who will probably write to Rockol filling me with insults and stringing together letters that all begin in the same way: “I would like to say to your journalist – assuming she can be called a journalist”, and to which I reply: try for a moment to leave aside your comfortable clothes of a fan, try to strip yourself of them and listen again with a virgin ear to a song, any song, take for example “So important” or “As if it had never been love” or “The perspective of me”, and try – if you can – to deny that the pattern is always the same, find a song without shouting and please point it out to us, because we didn’t seem to notice it, except perhaps in the track that closes the album, incomprehensibly a little less shouty than the other.

Not to mention the lyrics: sure, here it’s a bit like shooting at the Red Cross, but take “Stay listening” for example: “I searched for your name above every mouth” (?). Or “Your name in capital letters”: “You are to be defended with simple grace” (??). Or again, “As if it had never been love”: “Time can sometimes help / to feel less bad”. Aaaah! Luckily, Laura, you are there to tell us certain things. And coming back to you, fans: it is obvious (and also natural) that you will not take these lines into any consideration, and after all that is fine, otherwise Pausini would not be a successful singer but an ordinary wretch.

Moreover, it is clear that Pausini certainly does not need the opinion of the so-called “critics” to move forward. But we take the liberty of giving her some advice: she should stop with that set voice of hers, all intent on searching for improbable high notes, because we all understand that she is good and in tune, and should try – sooner or later; so, if you feel like it – to get your hands a little dirty and really dare for once (you will never do it anyway).