Tommaso Paradiso: “I have a question for Springsteen. And Sanremo…”

“Aristotle said that happiness is knowledge. In my opinion, change occurs only through a profound knowledge of things.” Thomas Paradiso quotes the philosophers of 300 BC with the same naturalness with which travel around Rome on a scooter for rent, because “I can only write while moving”.
Traveling through the streets of the Eternal City he found inspiration for “Paradise House“, the new album that celebrates the house as “a pleasant place, the definition of serenity and love, my happy thought wherever I am in the world”. In 2022 he told Rockol that he would never participate in the Sanremo Festival as a competitor… but today’s Tommaso is not the same as three years ago.

This record is a house that wants to collect everything that matters to you. What is important to you?
The people. The people I live with, understood as a family unit, but also as friends, as collaborators, the people with whom I write, with whom I make music. The people I meet on the street who give you a smile, with whom you can exchange a smile even if you don’t know them. I still believe in good things, even if maybe I’m a little naive, I don’t know. But all this is part of the important things in my life, including the house.

Speaking of friends. The only featuring on the album is with Setak. How was “But how do rappers do it” born and what value does friendship with him have?
First of all I must say that it is one of the songs that, every time I hear it, brings a tear to my eye, I have to tell the truth. Because it is a song that is too true, too sincere and written by two inadequate people like him and me. Especially when it’s night, we let ourselves go a little and start to become more sensitive. “But how do rappers do it” recounts twenty years of time spent together and moreover, compared to twenty years ago, we are even closer friends than before. It’s a wonderful thing. It tells our story and how we think about many things. Unlike people who drink to forget, we drink to remember: to remember these magical and also sad moments that we experienced together.

Is there something you wanted to communicate with this new project that you’ve never been able to share before?
The importance of the home. Communicate the central importance of the home, understood with all the meanings I was talking about before. I’m not that grown up, or matured; it’s not that one suddenly becomes good and wise. Bullshit always happens, but perhaps the concept of home, perhaps at twenty or thirty years old, I wasn’t ready to express. Now yes.

You say that women are in charge in your life. How does the female universe influence you?
There is a song I wrote a long time ago – it’s called “Between the Road and the Stars” – in which I say: “These women are not a danger, but the driving force behind everything”. Even if I write songs that talk about something else, not necessarily about love, there is always a woman at the end; even a chat with a woman who in that moment enlightens you and brings out something that perhaps before was only dormant. I am truly, deeply in love with being feminine. For me it has always been a source of inspiration, as it has been for good poets, right? The angelic woman, the Dolce stil novo, that stuff. Well, for me it’s the same, even though centuries have passed.

How do you manage the relationship between spontaneity and construction in writing?
In my opinion, construction enters a second phase, when we need to make things right, when we need to give structure to something that is still rough. Spontaneity is the initial phase, that is, the primordial phase, when you have to start writing things, words, texts, music, notes that didn’t exist before. There you have to absolutely let yourself be carried away by spontaneity. Nothing starts from something already packaged, that is, from construction. Construction is the last piece, it is the final chiseling.

You like people who know how to overturn patterns. Type?
Without going too far, the people who are close to me are enough: I admire them because they are much stronger than me, more structured. I am very fascinated by these people, who, in addition to knowing how to overturn patterns, have the courage to make decisions, even when the decision is difficult to make. I am very fascinated by people with a lot of energy, because they are different from me.

You’re a Springsteen addict. What would you steal from Bruce if you could?
Eh… It’s Springsteen, what do you want to steal from him? All! Unfortunately we have nothing to do with it, he and I, but I would really like to talk to him. It will never happen, alas, but Noel Gallagher once said that the best music chat he ever had in his life was with the Boss. He never confessed what they said to each other, but he thinks it was nice to be able to talk to each other. At this point you will ask me: and what questions would you ask him? I don’t know, whatever. Well, one thing that I would steal from him at the highest levels is that physical performance that he manages to do during live shows at eighty years of age. He hasn’t even broken a drop of sweat since he was twenty. fuck you. By the second piece I also have sweaty shoes. And instead he stands there, energetic, three and a half hours of concert, he doesn’t feel them at all. I would ask him the secrets to getting to that age like this.

Is the tour of the buildings a way to welcome those who love you into your new home?
It is the best way, absolutely the best way to welcome those who love me here, in this house. But this is an element that has never changed: every time there is a live performance, there is always something impressive between me and them, and in my opinion this thing always remains. Unless someone kills me.

Did you think about live shows while composing the album?
Yes, for example I understood where to place the song “Tornare a casa” in live performances. It’s one of the few certainties I have.

Sanremo. Have you submitted a song? Have you changed your mind about singing competitions?
There are interviews that are given at times when maybe you’re either pissed off, or you think in a different way, or things are going in a certain way… You get different ideas. A few years ago, when everyone became obsessed with Sanremo, practically nothing else existed anymore. Everyone stopped you on the street, even the neighbors… nothing else mattered about music other than going to Sanremo. So at that point someone responds with a bit of resentment: we’re here talking about the album and you’re just asking me that question. Certain exits depend on that. But statistics say that sooner or later I will go there, so…