I’ve been writing songs my whole life, ever since I was a child. It has always been the only way to understand myself and to exorcise the pain.
I was born as a songwriter and only later became a producer. I’ve always produced the songs I write, so this transition was quite natural. My approach always begins with the song, as I hardly ever work on things I don’t write myself.
That’s how it goes: we meet in the studio, have a coffee, talk about ourselves and just start writing. But only when I think a song is good do I move to the second step, which is the arrangement. I still have a sense of ancient respect for music. I never make fun of it, and I never do something just because it’s work.
Music has literally saved my life, and every time I walk into the studio it’s like entering a temple.
I’ve got my work team there and it’s been the same for ages. Here is Paolo Antonacci, with whom I’ve written many radio hits in recent years, and Stefano Clessi, my lifelong friend. We started together in an independent reality, inventing ourselves every day. He was the one who introduced me to songwriting, I never thought that an artist would sing songs written by someone else until ten years ago. Now I find myself working with many different artists from different genres and music worlds.
All my work definitely shares a veil of melancholy and emotion that I’ve always carried deep within. I’ve never believed in packaged music, just to be clear, that’s made of “plastic”.
To vibrate my deepest strings, songs must have some sort of restlessness.
In the same way, every production preserves my taste and training from the golden age of hip hop in Berlin to 80s electronic music. I’m truly in love with pop and everything that makes you hum a song from the very first time you hear it.
The Italian music scene changes from month to month and I find it very inspiring right now: there are no clear distinctions anymore, all the rules have been broken. This keeps me awakeand inspires me so much. Take for example Mahmood and Blanco: only two years ago, these two artists would have been defined as “urban” and yet they won Sanremo with an exquisitely Italian pop song, a beautiful melody in the best Italian traditions. This is the triumph of pop. The metrics change a little, of course, but urban is now mixed up with pop, there are no rules anymore.
Our country celebrates melody, and a lovely melody always wins over everything else. It wins over repeated attempts to be cool at the expense of the song, and it also wins over useless attempts to make a production forcibly lavish, which only weakens the songwriting.
In the end, only the songs win. This is so simple that is only understood by a few.
Text by Davide Simonetta
© Riproduzione riservata
