Lucio Battisti

The partnership between Lucio Battisti and Giulio Rapetti, aka Mogol, was built over the years through curious episodes and improbable gestations of songs that would go on to make history. One of these is without doubt the story behind the birth of “Emozioni”, the song released on October 15, 1970, generally regarded as one of the peaks of their collaboration, with its intimate narrative and universal resonance. An inner journey suspended between melancholy, wonder and solitude, told through lyrics of extraordinary evocative power that, over time, have become part of Italy's collective imagination. Its genesis was certainly a special one, and it had no small effect on the final result.

I'll Show You Brazil

On June 21, 1970, the day of the World Cup final between Italy and Brazil, while the whole country sat glued to the television, Lucio Battisti and Mogol chose a completely different path: they set off on horseback from Milan bound for Rome, in search of authentic contact with nature and with themselves. Battisti himself would later describe the spirit of the trip in the pages of Sorrisi e Canzoni: “The spirit of it is to prove to ourselves that we can do it,” he explained, “and to enjoy, without worries, real contact with nature, to cure ourselves a little of the ailments of our working life, of haste, of the anguished race against time.”
It's an experience that perfectly reflects the character of the singer-songwriter, who was already impatient with clichés and any attempt to pigeonhole him into a fixed definition. During the journey he preferred to sleep outdoors, tackling trails, woods and beaches, to the point that, as he would recall, “sometimes, though rarely, we come across a stretch of asphalt...” That long ride would spark the inspiration for “Emozioni”. Once back from the trip, Battisti translated those feelings into music, explaining that he wanted to capture “that intimate tension, those abrupt shifts, suspended in mid-air, to better express the sense of discovery, of wonder, of freedom that Giulio and I felt as we ventured through meadows, hills and rivers, as if we were seeing nature for the first time.” As usual, he recorded the melody on tape and handed it to Mogol: the music came first, the words would follow.

The lyrics took shape in two distinct moments. A first part came in one go at Mogol's country house in Molteno, while the second arrived during a car trip with his family. At the wheel, unable to take notes, the lyricist was forced to repeat the lines to himself over and over so as not to forget them, until, once he reached his destination, he finally put them down on paper. That unusual gestation produced a text with an irregular rhythm and extraordinarily powerful imagery, destined to go down in the history of Italian song. According to Pietruccio Montalbetti of Dik Dik, however, the first draft didn't fully convince Battisti. The musician is said to have remarked: “The opening is perfect, but then it slips into ordinary words. I'd like you to change the meaning and let's try to give it a real emotion.” A suggestion that helped steer Mogol toward the final version destined to become one of the most celebrated lyrics in Italian music.

An Unconventional Lyric

The result was a song that eluded the traditional conventions of the singer-songwriter tradition. Rather than telling a linear story, “Emozioni” unfolds through images and fragments, building a genuine journey into the self. The opening lines, with the heron flying over the river and the wish to “find oneself flying,” convey a sense of freedom and fusion with nature. But that serenity is immediately cracked by the famous “subtle sorrow,” a seemingly impossible phrase that captures the moment when happiness gives way to an inexplicable melancholy.
The whole text is built on images that have stayed etched in the collective imagination: the attempt to “clasp hands to hold on to something inside me, but it isn't there in your mind” speaks to the impossibility of truly communicating one's inner world; “driving like a madman with the headlights off in the night to see if it's really so hard to die” is not an invitation to self-destruction, but the extreme representation of existential unease and the search for a limit that can still make one feel alive. Even the famous closing line, “You can call them emotions if you like,” seems to suggest that the word “emotions” is almost insufficient to contain the complexity of the feelings experienced by the narrator.

Battisti's music adds further richness to the story. The delicate guitar introduction, the strings conducted by Gian Piero Reverberi and a refined yet never intrusive arrangement accompany every emotional shade of the story. The song builds with remarkable naturalness, alternating moments of suspension with orchestral swells without ever losing its intimate dimension. The recording itself became legendary, and not only for the star-studded cast involved, at Ricordi's Milan studios on Via dei Cinquecento in the Corvetto district, a former parish cinema converted into a makeshift recording studio: Battisti on vocals and guitar, Franco Mussida on second guitar, Damiano Dattoli on bass, Franz Di Cioccio on drums, Flavio Premoli on keyboards and tambourine. Around them, an orchestra of more than fifty musicians conducted by Gian Piero Reverberi. According to the accounts of those involved, the released version was essentially the first complete take, so intense that it left Battisti and everyone present deeply moved.

In London with the Who's Pete Townshend

Released on October 15, 1970 as the A-side of the single backed with “Anna”, “Emozioni” quickly became one of the defining songs of Battisti's repertoire. The single topped the Italian charts and helped definitively cement the artistic partnership between Battisti and Mogol.
The song also had an international version, “Emotions”, made as part of the project through which the singer-songwriter tried to break into foreign markets. Also famous is the episode recounted by Mogol about a private listening session for Pete Townshend of the Who, who was thrilled by it. “We met him by chance,” Mogol recalled, “Lucio had recognized him and pointed him out to me. We played him 'Emozioni'; I thought it would be too slow by Anglo-Saxon standards and that he wouldn't like it. Instead Townshend said: 'Wait a minute', and when he came back there was a whole entourage of publishing house staff, all very young, whom he'd asked to come and listen, and while Lucio sang he read the English version from a sheet of paper... He said: 'It's fantastic'.”
Despite the interest it sparked abroad, however, Battisti chose not to pursue a genuine international career, turning down contract terms he considered unfavorable. A real shame, given the interest the singer-songwriter from Poggio Bustone had generated across the Channel, starting with that of his well-known fan David Bowie, with whom he even got the chance to write a song. But that's definitely another story.

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15/07/2026