The song from Beyoncé's new album sung in Italian
All true: Beyoncé sings in Italian. In “Cowboy Carter”, her new album released today, the 200 million copy selling superstar has included a small tribute to our country. In “Daughter”, one of the twenty-seven (!!!) tracks included in the ideal sequel to “Renaissance”, the voice of “Listen” interprets some of the verses of “Caro mio ben“, a famous motif – reinterpreted, over the years, also by Montserrat Caballé, Luciano Pavarotti and Cecilia Bartoli – of a short chamber aria composed in the eighteenth century by Tommaso Giordani, born in Naples between 1730 and 1733 and who died in Dublin in 1806. In lyric video of the song, available on YouTube, the camera shoots from below the statue of a Madonna with lit candles. And Beyoncé sings:
Dear my Ben
At least believe me
Without you my heart languishes
Dear my Ben
Without you my heart languishes
Your faithful sighs every time
Take away so much rigor from me
Take away so much rigor from me
So rigorous.
Little curiosity: it is not the first time that “Caro mio ben” has been covered by a pop music artist.
Before Beyoncé paid homage to the air, Sting had already thought of it in 1988. The former Policeman, who has always had a special relationship with Italy (in 1997 he purchased a sixteenth-century residence on the hills of Figline Valdarno, in Tuscany, together with his wife Trudie Styler, who last year dedicated a beautiful documentary to Naples entitled “Can I enter? An ode to Naples”), he interpreted Giordani's piece in 1988, during a concert in Tuscany. In 2009, however, it was an Italian pop star, perhaps the Italian pop star par excellence (with a capital “p”), who paid homage to the composer: Mina recorded her own version of “Caro mio ben” for the surprising album “Sulla tua boca lo dirò” , in which the Tiger of Cremona reinterpreted pieces of classical music.
In “Cowboy Carter” there is another homage, more folkloristic, if we want to call it that, to our country: a song is in fact titled “Spaghetti” and in a photo shared on Instagram to announce the release of the album Beyoncé portrayed while holding a handful of spaghetti to her mouth with one hand, a bit like Totò in the famous scene from “Poverty and Nobility”.
“Cowboy Carter” is Beyoncé's country breakthrough album, but she underlined: “The criticisms I had to face when I started dedicating myself to this genre forced me to overcome the limits that had been imposed on me. I challenged myself itself and took my time to blend the genres together. I hope you can feel my heart and soul, all the passion I poured into every detail. This is not a country album: this is a Beyoncé album.” .
