Every year, Italy almost completely stops for a week or so, when everybody will be talking about one thing and one thing only: the Sanremo Music Festival (or, to call it by its actual name: the Festival della canzone italiana - the Italian Song Festival).

The relatively small town of Sanremo (almost at the western border with France) becomes the centre of the world, and almost everyone spends their evenings watching it live on Rai 1, either because of interest, or because the other channels on Italian TV basically give up, or to hate-watch it.

The Festival has been held every year since 1951, and - I learnt today - was the inspiration for the Eurovision Song Contest.

When I was little, it used to last three days; now it has been stretched up to five days. Depending on who you are, you may be interested in the original songs (every song in the competition must be an original one) by well-established names, in the debuting new young talents, in the international ‘special guests’, or just the fashion.

Since I left Italy, I haven’t thought about it at all, so when my social feeds are flooded with Sanremo hashtags I’m always surprised that it’s already that time of the year; at least I’m a bit prepared for when my mum inevitably will call me and ask me if I’m watching it.

I’ve been thinking and writing this little post about five Italian songs I love listening to for a few weeks now, and I’ve just realised that some of them premiered at the Festival. So it seems fitting to publish this today, the last day of its 75th edition.

Spoiler alert: they are mostly songs about a break-up, but you know, sad songs say so much.

Un’emozione da poco (Anna Oxa, 1978)

For instance, this song premiered at the 28th Sanremo Festival.

Its very aggressive start annoyed me so much that for a long time I just couldn’t listen to the rest of it. It starts with an orchestral intro (which is a quintessential Sanremo thing), interrupted by electric guitars and a first verse sung on a totally unrelated melody (I am not a musicologist, so I may be terribly wrong).

In fairness, this contrast might have been the point, and the audio equivalent of the ’transgressive’ (read: androgynous) outfit and makeup that Anna Oxa adopted for her performance.

It also represents the conflict described in the lyrics: a woman who’s fully committed to a relationship that, she suddenly realises, might be toxic. The man she loves doesn’t seem to care about her, and he doesn’t care about how a little remark can cause her a lot of distress. What should be un’emozione da poco (an emotion of little value) opens a huge crisis for her.

She finally starts to understand that reality could be different from the love dream she’s been living in.

Or at least that’s what I understand from the lyrics.

The lyricist put so many words in that first verse (‘c’è una ragione che cresce in me’) that the singer is obliged to sing ‘c’è una ragione che crescimme’ (not a real word). Even as an Italian native speaker, I couldn’t understand the words. So I dismissed the whole song for a long time.

Today I love the musical contrast between the song sections; it’s a joy to try and follow (and try to sing).

I don’t really like any other song by Anna Oxa, nor I usually particularly enjoy songs by the same composers (lyrics are by Ivano Fossati; the music is by Guido Guglielminetti). But this one is a little jewel on its own.

Insieme a te non ci sto più (Caterina Caselli, 1968)

Caterina Caselli (nicknamed ‘Casco d’Oro’, meaning Golden bob because of her haircut) reached widespread success in Italy in 1966 with the Sanremo song Nessuno mi può giudicare (’Nobody Can Judge Me’) and then with Sono bugiarda (’I’m a Liar’: it’s a cover of the Monkees’ I’m a Believer; the lyrics carry the same meaning, but in 1960s Italy you couldn’t risk annoying the Catholic Church by using the word believer in a non-religious context; so she professes she doesn’t believe in love, but she’s a liar).

Insieme a te non ci sto più (I won’t stay with you any longer, written by two absolute masters of Italian music: pianist Paolo Conte and lyricist Vito Pallavicini), also known as Arrivederci amore, ciao (Goodbye, my love, bye) was not presented at Sanremo. It is the most heartbreaking song about a break-up that I know, especially because it adopts the point of view of the person who decides to end the relationship.

She is aware of the pain she’s causing, but she also knows that the love story doesn’t fulfil her needs anymore: her partner can’t give her the tenderness and the understanding that she can’t find in this stupid world.

There’s not a single line in this song that doesn’t make my eyes well up (I found a full English translation here), but the one where she asks him to smile at her as she’s leaving, regardless of how hard it will be, usually breaks my composure.

And the words ‘chi se ne va, che male fa’ are a masterpiece in themselves, because they can be interpreted both as ‘the one who leaves, they’re inflicting so much pain’ or ‘the one who leaves, what’s wrong about what they’re doing?

Caselli became very early in her career a music producer, and she discovered, among other artists, Andrea Bocelli.

The song has been covered endless times by Italian artists and is featured in many films (twice in films by director Nanni Moretti, including in the end scene of his 2001 Palme d’Or winner La stanza del figlio).

Bonus track

Among the many covers of this song, the most well-known is a 2002 version by Franco Battiato.

I want to believe that Battiato weaves into the coda of the song (arrivederci, amore, ciao) a reference to Ciao amore, ciao, a different song written in 1967 by Italian singer and songwriter Luigi Tenco, which deals once again with a break-up, this time in the context of a common trope in Italian songs of the sixties: the trauma of leaving a small village in the countryside to go and find work in a big city.

Tragic fact: Luigi Tenco presented Ciao amore, ciao at the 17th Festival di Sanremo in a duet with his then-partner Dalida, in a performance heavily affected by his assumption of drugs and alcohol. The song wasn’t selected for the final stage of the Festival, and Tenco committed suicide on that same night.

Nessun dolore (Lucio Battisti, 1978)

Lucio Battisti is the Italian singer-songwriter if you grew up in Italy in the seventies and eighties: one of the first song anybody with a guitar would learn is La canzone del sole (The Sun song), which has a very basic chords progression and prude lyrics - which is a plus when your main place of youth aggregation is managed by the Catholic Church (basically, the song protagonist is horrified by a girl he used to know, who is now very sex-positive).

Anyway, Battisti is a legend, thanks not only to a series of great songs, but also to his decision of stepping away from the spotlight of media and refusing any TV appearance or interview since the mid-seventies, and the adoption of almost inscrutable lyrics since the mid-eighties. He died at 55, in 1998.

Nessun dolore (No Pain) is not one of his most renowned songs, a b-side about a man claiming to feel no pain when his partner breaks up with him.

I find the song impressive for two reasons: one is the musical style; it’s essentially a disco track, which is not very common for this artist, with an occasionally borderline-embarrassing Bee Gees-like falsetto, but a killer bass guitar that keeps me hooked.

The second reason is the line that comes with the song climax: ‘E m’inaridivi’, triumphantly repeated three times, conveying the smugness of someone who’s showing off a clever solution to a difficult problem.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the words (’And you were withering me’): it’s just a phrase that nobody would ever use, and perfect alternation of consonants and vowels that feels almost magical. It even makes sense with the previous verse, that explains how (in the man’s view) the woman had been drying up their relationship for years by flirting around like she was ’tossing seeds to the wind’ (to adopt the lyrics of the English version, which honestly is painful to listen to).

The lyricist is Mogol, who provided the words for the first twenty years of Battisti’s career.

Giudizi universali (Samuele Bersani, 1997)

Singer-songwriter Samuele Bersani only took part in the Festival di Sanremo after he was already an established artist.

The first song of his I heard was 1992’s Chicco e Spillo, a very sad story about two brothers trying to rob a bank to get money to buy drugs, but he got more notoriety from Freak, a cheeky song about freedom, sex (saying ciao ciao to his girlfriend’s breasts) and exporting piadina romagnola to India (good luck with that, I can’t even find any in Belgium).

Giudizi universali (Last Judgments) is once again a break-up song.

It feels like he has been dumped, and he didn’t take it well. The video conveys it very well, the melody is sweet, the lyrics are poetic, but also extremely hard on the other person, accusing her of being too cerebral to be able to enjoy a simple relationship and the joys of life. And it mentions Marcello Mastroianni, which is a plus.

But I hope to never be on the receiving end of a phrase like ‘non c’è in quello che dici qualcosa che pensi, sei solo la copia di mille riassunti’: ‘in the things you say there’s nothing that you actually thought of yourself, you’re just the copy of a thousand summary’. Aren’t we all, Samuele?

Salirò (Daniele Silvestri, 2002)

Daniele Silvestri is the singer-songwriter and performer I’ve seen the most times live.

He came to prominence with Voglia di gridare, a song claiming that shouting slogans when you’re part of a crowd is inherently fascist. Then he was at Sanremo 1995 with L’uomo col megafono, a song about a man with a bullhorn passionately addressing a crowd with no one listening to him. Then again in 1999 singing Aria, about a man serving a life sentence, whose only goal in life is breathing.

So, he’s definitely a committed author, but many of his songs are playful and full of wordplay.

Salirò (I will rise) is a hopeful song (again, with disco traits) about trying to muster up optimism and the will to get back on one’s feet after a difficult period (a break-up in the song, he wrote it following his father’s death).

Once again, the song premiered at Sanremo. This is the best video of it on YouTube, but everybody remembers this performance (unfortunately the audio is a bit off-sync with the video, which ruins the experience). Also, you can notice how the Festival has grown in budget since the seventies!

Only now that I’m writing about it, I’ve noticed that the previous song mentions Mastroianni, this song mentions Robert De Niro.
I’ve probably become a caricature of myself.