Zucchero cites others and continues to cite himself
November 5, 1998 Sugar released his eighth studio album titled “BlueSugar”. The album reached – as often happened in the career of the musician from Reggio Emilia – the first position in the sales charts. What you can read in the lines below is the review we published twenty-six years ago.
Zucchero is one of the few artists in Italy capable of always arousing the same type of controversy with each of their releases: that is, what he copied and where he copied from. It’s sad that things are like this, but they are, and this time there was no exception. The media had fun recovering all the quotes from Zucchero’s new album, from the most obvious ones (see the Michele Pecora case) to the in a certain sense more hidden ones, listing them precisely, demonstrating that the release of a new album of Zucchero is now considered more an opportunity to do some rock’n’roll trivia than to express an opinion on the actual album. Perhaps this also happens because, removing the various quotes, there is very little music left to review.
But in reality, far from wanting to criminalize the highly derivative nature of this music (ultimately an evil/good that has also gripped other artists before him), and given that some decent results can also be obtained using this technique (“Blue” is, beyond everything, an excellent single), what is most tiring is not only seeing Zucchero quoting others, but who continues to quote himself too much. What remains to be said about Zucchero’s album, and which concerns its most intimate nature, is that the impression is that of finding oneself in front of a useless album.
Useless for the music, which has been the same for at least three/four albums now (if you read the newspaper headlines in the aftermath of “Oro incense e beer” you will realize that nothing has changed), useless for the fake experimentation which never ends to nothing (what does “You make me feel loved” want to be? So much desire for U2? So much desire for modernity?), useless for a sound that remains more suited to the Pavarotti International than to a so-called album of true blues (which in the records of Sugar, incidentally and once and for all, never existed). Useless for the emotions it lets filter through, easy-listening just colored by a bit of Lambrusco which never bothers or really excites. We don’t feel like saying much about the lyrics, collages of other lyrics: singable, it’s true, Panellian and fascinating, it’s true, perhaps they too are a little tired of always being written in the same way.
What is saved? The single “Blu”, the amorous anger of “After us”, ruined by a pompous arrangement but still an absolute peak moment in the interpretation, and then the voice and interpretations of Zucchero. He is a pre-textual singer, says Panella di Zucchero, and it’s true. It is a merit that no one will ever be able to take away from them, just as unfortunately no one will ever be able to take away their success paranoia from their minds (see MTV Europe Music Awards). If Zucchero remembered that he was a pre-textual singer and stopped playing at being a rock star in public and insecure in private, if he recovered an Emilian genuineness and simplicity – so ostentatious but very little felt – one day he could really do things egregious, like those gentlemen who play the blues he claims to be inspired by. People who, unlike him, have always sought music and emotion first and not success, charts and production made in LA
