Tiziano Ferro with that voice can sing anything
Four years ago we were in the midst of the second wave of the pandemic and the future was little more than a hypothesis. Tiziano Ferro at that juncture he released the covers album “I accept miracles: the experience of others”. A record which, he told us in an interview, was born like this: “In that period of lockdown I decided that for fun I would throw myself into this thing, locking myself in the studio.” Below you can read our review of that album.
A covers album is an almost obligatory stage in a singer’s career. Tiziano Ferro has always known this. For years he kept a folder open on his PC with all the songs (of others) that sooner or later, in one way or another, he would like to reinterpret. This album wasn’t planned, he said. At least, not now. It was neither in his plans nor in those of the contract with the record company. “I accept miracles”, the latest album of unreleased songs, was released just a year ago and this summer Tiziano, who continued to extract singles one after the other, from “In mezzo a questo winter” to the duet with Jovanotti on ” Dance for me”, passing through “Amici per amministrazione”, should have taken him on tour in Italian stadiums.
The pandemic postponed everything to 2021. In the meantime, the experience of Sanremo 2020 arrived: a regular guest on all five evenings of the Festival hosted by Amadeus (and Fiorello), Ferro paid homage to some of the most significant in the history of the event, their original interpreters and their authors, from “Nel blu dipinto di blu” to “Take me to dance”, passing through “At least you in the universe” and “Perdere l’amore” (in duet with Massimo Ranieri). A third of the album was practically ready. The other ideas were there. Why, then, not complete it? He did it last spring in Los Angeles, where the singer-songwriter has lived since 2016, closed at home due to the lockdown, then proposing the finished project to the record company. “I accept miracles” has thus become a double album which contains, in addition to the one released last year, a second album entitled “The experience of others”.
A risky operation in the year of “I Love my radio“, the format of the Italian radios for the 45 years of private radios in Italy which among other things saw some great Italian artists – among others, Gianna Nannini, Eros Ramazzotti, Giorgia and Ferro himself, in duet with Ranieri right on “Perdere l’amore” – recording highly criticized covers of evergreens such as “La donna cannone” by De Gregori, “A woman as a friend” by Lucio Battisti and “Non sono una donna” by Loredana Berté.
He selected the songs by bringing back memories of his childhood and adolescence in the Lazio province at the end of the 1980s. He auditioned several of them (part of the work, which he personally supervised with his sound engineer Marco Sonzini, here “promoted” to co-producer, are .also told in the film “Ferro”, which comes out on Amazon Prime Video at the same time as the album). Many did not end up on the album, such as “Se m’innamoro” by Ricchi e Poveri or “Splendido splendide” by Donatella Rettore, and find out what led him to choose, instead, pieces such as “Cigarettes and coffee” by Scialpi or “Morirò d’amore” by Giuni Russo, certainly less expendable and paranoid – use the term – than the hit of the Genoese trio and the iconic song by the Venetian singer.
There are courageous covers.
“Rimmel” by Francesco De Gregori, for example, one of those songs that is difficult to even imagine hearing sung by performers other than the author, so much so is it inextricably linked to the story of whoever wrote it: “You made it for me rediscover once again”, the Prince let him know through a message that Tiziano would do well to print and frame. Or “And I come to look for you” by Battiato, which is not exactly the “classic” “The cure”, “Permanent center of gravity” or “I want to see you dance”. And “Non escludo il return”, the artistic testament of Franco Califano (co-signed together with Federico Zampaglione of Tiromancino), among the most beautiful pieces of his repertoire but also among the least known, if only because it arrived at a time when which the parable of the Roman singer-songwriter had now entered a downward phase, proposed by the almost seventy-year-old Caliph competing at a Sanremo Festival – the one in 2005, hosted by Bonolis – without success, eliminated after just two passes. .Difficult tests that Ferro overcomes with intelligencelimiting himself – without overdoing it – to proposing dignified reinterpretations of the originals, not even daring to overturn the arrangements (indeed, he makes them resonate – almost exactly the same – by musicians such as Victor Indrizzo, Michael Landau, Sean Hurley, Deron Johnson, sessionmen of caliber international with whom he has been working for some time).
Then there are covers that are easier to approach, such as “Margherita” by Cocciante and the same “Almeno tu nell’Universo” and “Nel blu dipinto di blu”, which are to all intents and purposes standards of Italian music, sung and re-sung by everyone, from kids in talent shows to Mina (honored here with “Ancora, anchor, anchor”).
Finally, episodes in which Tiziano felt freer to experiment, as in “Bella d’estate” by Mango (with the influence of Lucio Dalla), a classy interpretation suffocated however by the perhaps somewhat cumbersome sound of synthesizers and electronic drums, and in “Piove” by Jovanotti, completely redone with voice and beatbox. They could have done it better, but that’s it. .He asks purists not to tear their clothes in advance and not to turn up their noses even before having listened to the album. His idea, he says, was only to have certain gems rediscovered or in some cases discovered for the first time. In conclusion it is true that if “Rimmel” is back in high rotation forty-five years after its release, it is also thanks to it. And then, if we want to be honest, with that voice he can sing anything. And make it all up to you.
