Rosita Brucoli - Siamo stati tutto, siamo stati guai

In the new singer-songwriter pop scene, Rosita Brucoli is one of the talents to watch. Originally from Puglia, with a solid musical background that she keeps refining and enriching, she has an original, heartfelt and powerful songwriting style, a remarkable command of electronics, and a keen sensitivity for the most autobiographical and sincere expressive side of Italian singer-songwriter tradition. She's already paid her dues, with notable collaborations ranging from Niccolò Fabi to Marlene Kuntz, by way of the electronics of Clap! Clap!, and her voice and stage presence are already those of a mature artist. Not that hers isn't a generational perspective.

I find yours to be a very personal stylistic signature, especially in the original way you blend a bluesy vocal style, singer-songwriter storytelling and rap. How did this unpredictable alchemy come about?

Thanks for that feedback. I can tell you I'm always trying to be more and more myself, and it's a process that keeps evolving in relation to the experiences I go through and what I listen to. It's a whole mix of things to process. If I'm managing to do that, I'm happy about it.

If I think, for example, of a track like "Agente", the result is brilliant…

I think "Agente" successfully blends the singer-songwriter pop I've always listened to with a more auteur-driven approach. A songwriting style that's a bit more "Battisti" and one that's more modern, like that of Niccolò Fabi or Max Gazzè. And at the same time you can hear my love of rap, especially for an artist like Caparezza. If in singer-songwriter music I found a way to tell certain stories about life, along with musical and melodic references I tried to bring into my own music, in rap I find that raw storytelling I feel very close to: a way of talking about life with no filters, even when it comes to very private things. I recognize a lot of myself in that, and I light up whenever I hear that kind of storytelling.

In your new single, "Segreto", which isn't on your album but will be on your "Club della Fortuna", from which I expect great things, you team up with Roman DJ-producer Lorenzo BITW, one of the most interesting names on the Italian dance/electronic scene. You clearly had fun creating disorienting harmonies and exploring vocal timbre, and the effect is truly striking. How did the creative process unfold?

Lorenzo reached out to me and I was thrilled, because I couldn't wait to collaborate with a producer! He sent me several beats, and as soon as I heard this one I was mesmerized, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I sat there entranced for hours, with this wonderful feeling. The writing process flowed very naturally, and it turned out to be fertile ground for confessing this "Segreto" of mine.

Speaking of confessions, on your album "Siamo stati guai" you brought out some painful personal experiences, almost as a kind of catharsis achieved through the use of electronics as an expressive tool. Is that a fair reading?

The record was born at the computer right from the start: I needed raw sounds, synths that were even a bit distorted. Paradoxically, on this record the production actually helped me write the songs. The sounds helped me imagine narrative scenarios. In the past I used to write at the piano or keyboard, and only then work on the production in the studio. This time, my personal need to express the pain of my father's death, which is the main theme the record revolves around, drove the emotional and sonic search for the right tools to express what I was feeling.

In writing the record you tackle several themes that revolve around your personal grief, yet they become a kind of collective catharsis too: pain, dependency, loneliness, conflict within family relationships, including between mother and daughter, and growing up. I'd like to ask you, in such a personal writing process, how do you manage to find that thread of universality, which keeps happening and comes through so clearly in every song? When do you realize you've found words that take you outside yourself and also represent other people's emotions?

It's a complex question, but I'll try to answer as clearly as I can. First of all, I no longer live in the places where the stories I tell took place, and that helped me see myself a bit from the outside. It allowed me to find a way of relating to my experiences with some perspective. In fact the record ends with a new beginning, with a track that's precisely about a new life. Then there's another tool that helped me a lot: psychotherapy. I'm talking about situations and events I've worked through, that I've accepted and from which I've somehow detached myself. So the concision of the language isn't something I deliberately aimed for, it came out because I no longer live those stories in the same way. And that's exactly what psychotherapy does: it helps you step outside yourself.

What's striking is that, overall, both the record's atmosphere and the live show's are very energetic, almost joyful. There's still a huge impact, so in some way you're also close to a sense of celebration in "Siamo stati guai".

That's an interesting reading, thank you. Because, in my view, pain is energy. Feeling something means, after all, being alive. "Siamo stati guai" represents me a lot for that reason too: it corresponds to the emotional process of turning pain into strength. It's something I learned from childhood.

In "L'amore va" you often use a low register, with very full-bodied chest notes, while at other moments a more airy voice comes through. Have you consciously worked on these two vocal personas? In the writing it almost seems like this duality follows the twists of the story. Is there a deliberate exploration of vocality in your work?

Yes, let's say there's a bit of that duality inside me. In what I listen to, in my personality, and so in my vocal delivery too. I really like unusual voices. Scratchy ones, for instance: lately I've been listening to a girl who's driven me wild, her name is Eva Bloo. She does a kind of rap that's almost all screamed, and I love it. But I also love ethereal voices. I think of Caroline Polachek, who's one of my favorite singers right now. Even in my listening habits in general I have this double soul: on one side rap, very direct, on the other a lot of Italian music from the Sixties, including the great Mina. So yes, there is a real exploration going on. I've tried to nurture these two natures, which I think are existential before they're vocal. Still, however much you study and experiment, I increasingly notice that it's expressive need that ends up shaping the timbre.

How did the idea come about to write a track for voices alone, "Un fiore", and dedicate it to your mother?

When I started writing "Un fiore" the process was very long. Every time I wrote a line I struggled to keep going. I kept telling myself: I can't write something like this, it's too much. In fact I couldn't even get the words out of my mouth, even though I had them. So I'd stop, do something else, sleep on it. Then I'd wake up and tell myself: keep going, even if you cry, even if you feel terrible. Write it, and then you'll decide whether to release it or not. In the end it took me about a month, a month and a half, to write it. One line at a time, because it really was difficult. At first I'd even put together a pre-production. Then in the studio we realized that the more we stripped away from that song, the greater its impact became. The more bare we made it, the better it worked. In the end we chose to arrange it with voices alone.

And to open the album with that very track…

It's as if the record were a kind of concept album: it starts with birth, then there's the moment of adolescence, then becoming an adult, and finally letting go.

Let's talk about the production and the contribution made by Ramiro Levy of Selton and Alessandro Di Sciullo. I'd like to ask you what your relationship with them was like. I feel like I can hear their way of working on sound in other projects too, for example with Giulia Mei or on Anna Castiglia's Decostruire. It's as if they'd hit on a way of combining female singer-songwriter vocals with electronic sound. What was it like living through this adventure with them?

Yes, there's definitely a stylistic signature there, maybe a shared taste that somehow expands and takes different shapes depending on the situation. I think that when you work with other people, it's right to trust them and let yourself be influenced. Alessandro and Ramiro picked up on my world really well. We spent a lot of days together, in the studio but also outside it, and that was essential. Nowadays people often don't work like that anymore: I know of situations where producers show up for half a day, wrap up the tracks and leave. With them it was different. They listened to the pre-production demos very seriously and respectfully. For instance, they worked a lot on the vocals, partly because that's something I already do in my own pre-production: the sonic world reflects me, my aesthetic and my emotions. At the same time, I'm happy that the record is part of this current they're working in. There's a real ferment of female singer-songwriters right now, and I'm glad to be part of it.

Also because it seems like the influences go both ways: it's as if you had influenced them too. Selton's music, for instance, also seems to be evolving and growing stronger within this ferment. It almost feels like watching a scene being born.

It's nice that you noticed that. People rarely talk about "scenes," especially once projects are already established. There's this idea that once an artist has made it, everything becomes individual, whereas in reality an exchange would always help. In my opinion, Selton are showing great openness, because they keep cross-pollinating with others even now.

Between 2022 and 2025 it seemed to me there was a moment of strong progressive openness in Italy too. Now, though, I get the feeling the environment is regressing a bit toward a more patriarchal, more conservative culture. But maybe that's just my impression. As an artist living inside this environment, what do you perceive?

I still feel strong resistance toward figures like us. There's definitely a part of the audience getting more and more used to seeing us onstage, to listening to certain kinds of music, to understanding that a woman too can sit behind a computer and produce. But there's still a part of people who resist and want to fight against it. I don't really understand why: maybe out of fear. A woman who does these things well is a strong presence, especially because there are more and more of us. And so you get comments like: "Yes, but that record isn't really all hers," or "maybe she doesn't actually play piano that well." It's a slow road, but I remain hopeful.

Exactly. But I feel very much at ease with it. If I have an audience to win over, I have a great time, because they don't know me and I can be anything. Some dates are truly magical. I remember, for instance, with particular fondness the opening set for Giulia Mei's sold-out show at Santeria in Milan, or a benefit event for Palestine in Conversano, where there were lots of interesting people who, however, didn't know me. Watching them get won over by the first song, then the second, and little by little more and more, until I see them dancing… watching their involvement evolve… to me that's incredible. A kind of social experiment, except the animal being observed is me.

Speaking of social themes, in Siamo stati guai, starting with the title itself, a generational aspect often emerges concerning economic hardship, unmet certainties, memories. Could we say that this imagery presents an older world with the bill for traumas and problems that your generation didn't create?

This question brings me right back to therapy. At a certain point I became almost obsessed with the parent-child relationship. I was looking for answers in my own story, but at some point I realized those answers were no longer there. I had to accept what had happened. Accept, too, that my mother, for example, has certain emotional limits, certain affective dynamics she perhaps never learned. Since I could no longer fight it out with my father, because he's gone, I started looking at other people's stories: friends, people my age. I'd ask my peers about their families. I wasn't doing it for the record but for my own life, to understand people better. The emotional language running through Siamo stati guai like a common thread also comes from this dialogue of mine with other people's stories and experiences.

But there's also a social dimension. Your writing is very urban, yet also tied to the imagery of provincial Puglia. Details: a kitchen, a country house, everyday scenes. These aren't the glittering lives of pop…

Yes, I see what you mean. The places I describe are the ones from my own life, fairly ordinary social contexts, I'd say lower-middle class.

Are you a “working class heroine”?

It sounds better in English. 

But the provinces, told through the eyes of a young person, can be something interesting and even new. We're probably all a bit sick of subways and gold rings by now, aren't we?

It's true. And I think you can see it in the listening figures too, in the charts: you can feel it. People are starting to need something else, something truer, maybe.

At one point on the record you talk about a new beginning, but you also talk about a current love, a relationship that changes the way you experience parties.

Yes. Let's say that thanks to this love I've learned to experience parties differently from how I used to, but also to know when to leave. The most important thing I've learned from this relationship is the different way he lives his life compared to me. In some way we keep walking on two parallel tracks, without losing our own identity. We also come from two different social classes, from very different backgrounds, but we've influenced each other. I've also learned a language of adult love. I chose it.

Have conversations with the audience sprung up around these songs? Nowadays, with social media, everything is more immediate: people tell you their own stories after you've told yours. You told me earlier that you listen a lot to your friends: have you also found new people to talk to among your listeners?

Yes, it happens often. Ever since I started releasing my first songs, a lot of people have messaged me privately telling me their stories. For example, it happened with "Lasciamo papà", one of the singles released before the album. A girl wrote to me to thank me: she told me her mother was going through a hard time because she was trying to leave her father. She told me that song had made her feel less alone. It also happens that people write to me saying: "You touched some very deep chords in me," or "Thank you, you made me cry. I hadn't cried in months." Knowing that I was able, through my songs, to unlock an emotional state, or in some cases, to bring relief, means a lot to me. It's like taking care, in some way, of whoever is listening. A form of care, of attention, of dialogue.

(29 March 2026)

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