Lucio Dalla

Given the success of the playlist “Hit mancate e nevergreen”, dedicated to the songs by Francesco De Gregori worth rediscovering, we thought we'd repeat the same experiment with his old sparring partner and lifelong musical friend: Lucio Dalla. In the case of the Bolognese singer-songwriter, for this writer, the “hidden gems” are to be found above all among his early albums from the Sixties, in the phase of the so-called “engine trilogy” devised together with the poet Roberto Roversi, to which we dedicated the feature “Storia di una trilogia” on its fiftieth anniversary, as well as in the golden period of the artist born on March 4, 1943 — namely the stretch running from his debut as a lyricist on “How Deep Is the Sea”, through the two subsequent self-titled masterpieces (“Lucio Dalla” and “Dalla”), the 1981 “Q-Disc” and the underrated “1983”. That said, there's no shortage of picks from the following period too, even if it was overall less rich and inspired.

1999

No allusions here to adventures in space set in that fateful year, later made mythical by a famous science-fiction TV series. “1999” is simply the (deliriously wild) title track of the first album released by Lucio Dalla, right in the thick of the beat era, produced by Gian Franco Reverberi. It was 1966, and the man who'd set his sights on the Bolognese singer-songwriter, fresh off a stint paying his dues in jazz combos, was none other than a guru of Italian song like Gino Paoli, who saw in him “Italy's first soul singer”. Hear it to believe it: this disorienting psychedelic beat number, delivered with rough-edged R&B verve alongside the group Gli Idoli.

The River and the City

But Lucio struggles to make a name for himself in the Italian Sixties: his rough, unkempt looks don't inspire the same warmth and affection as those of the "limber" Celentano. To a little Italy singing along to "Non ho l'età" and leaving Luigi Tenco to drift into oblivion, a figure like Dalla simply can't appeal. Yet despite the flop of his first LP, "1999", Dalla presses on with his own path, even brushing up against the beat movement. And at the dawn of the new decade, he lands a decisive blow with the album "Terra di Gaibòla" (1970), arranged by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis (later better known as Oliver Onions) with lyrics by writers such as Sergio Bardotti, Gianfranco Baldazzi and Paola Pallottino, who wrap the record in a dreamy lyricism, elevating the Bolognese suburb of Gaibòla to a legendary place. Among the most evocative songs of the period is this dreamlike "Il fiume e la città", with orchestral arrangements and flutes tinged with prog, which the following year would become the B-side of "4/3/1943".

Non sono matto (o la capra Elisabetta)

The album "Terra di Gaibòla" also contains the very first lyric penned by Lucio Dalla himself, set to music by his mentor Gino Paoli. And it couldn't be more disorienting, starting with the title: "I'm Not Crazy (or Elisabetta the Goat)". It's essentially the closing argument of a murder defendant speaking in his own defence, complete with a surreal "motive" (“Fu di maggio su quel ponte che Luigi mi parlò di te/ e mi disse che eri sua e entro un anno all’altare ti porterà/ considerai il raccolto andato male/ anche la morte della capra Elisabetta/ ma soprattutto il fatto che in venti anni/ che in venti anni non ho riso mai”). Adding extra shine to this gem are the hazy arrangements of the De Angelis brothers, who also experiment with some innovative touches, such as recording the sound of a courtroom.

La casa in riva al mare

If "Terra di Gaibòla" already contained interesting hints, the following "Storie di casa mia" reveals further signs of the future greatness of the Bolognese singer-songwriter, bolstered by lyrical contributions from Ron and Paola Pallottino, as well as by one of his first great successes, the famous "4 marzo 1943", also performed at Sanremo. But there's no shortage of other rough little gems, like this heart-wrenching ballad, penned by the esteemed duo Gianfranco Baldazzi-Sergio Bardotti, which tells of a longed-for but imaginary love. The protagonist is a prisoner locked up in a jail near the sea, probably on an island. From there, besides the sea, he can see a white house, from which a woman leans out every day, whom he names Maria. And in his mind he fantasizes, once his sentence is served, of marrying her and living happily together (“E sognò la libertà/ E sognò di andare via, via, via/ E un anello vide già/ Sulla mano di Maria”). But meanwhile the years pass, so the protagonist grows old and eventually dies, repeating: "Vengo da te Marì…". Also worth remembering is the guitar intro, reminiscent of "Bookends" by Simon & Garfunkel, and the fine cover of the song recently recorded by Tosca.

Lucio dove vai?

No less heart-wrenching is the closing track of "Storie di casa mia", entrusted to this tender soul-flavoured self-confession titled "Lucio dove vai", in which Dalla recounts his restlessness, his hunger for life and his existential frenzy. Written together with Bardotti and Reverberi, it's a bittersweet snapshot that doesn't spare flashes of biting self-criticism: "Lucio dove vai? Sempre in giro a cercare per le strade… Neppure tu sai più perché, ma canti, ma canti… Perché hai coperto col berretto rosso il grigio che c'è in te?". But it closes on a note of hope, in keeping with that unbridled vitality that has always been the defining trait of the man Dalla: "Ma vivi, tu vivi, tu vivi". As Dalla himself would explain: "It was meant to be a polemical song, I was going through a kind of dissociation: my public image was dissociated from reality. For instance, I didn't seek out interviews, I hated journalists, photographers". The lyrics reveal that confusion which years earlier he'd tried to resolve with the help of a psychoanalyst, in order to untangle that intricate knot of emotional, passionate, intellectual, sexual and family threads that kept him bound. But Lucio had no intention of solving his problems: he had learned to live with his ghosts and would always turn them into his own "reality-distortion field", feeding his art.

L'auto targata "To"

With this jarring incipit, we officially enter the legendary "motor trilogy", created together with the Marxist poet and intellectual Roberto Roversi. The right man at the right time: he's the sophisticated conceptual mind capable of sealing the artistic metamorphosis Dalla was aiming for. An operation meant to give the song form a "civic" quality, no longer tied solely to formulaic heart-and-love schemes. "Il giorno aveva cinque teste" (1973) opens with this sharp indictment against "an Italy gutted by the bulldozers that devoured it". Strings and tolling bells conceal a bitter slice of migration (from Scilla to Turin) and property speculation, in the illusory eldorado of the North: “Questo luogo del cielo è chiamato Torino/ Lunghi e grandi viali, splendidi monti di neve/ Sul cristallo verde del Valentino/ Illuminate tutte le sponde del Po/ Mattoni su mattoni/ Sono condannati i terroni/ A costruire per gli altri/ Appartamenti da cinquanta milioni”. In a burst of optimism, the two collaborators even submitted "Un'auto targata To" to Sanremo, inevitably getting rejected. After all, Dalla himself would call it "the song most unbalanced in terms of the relationship between language and ideology", within a record that sounds like an indictment of rampant capitalism, which alienates humanity within the automated mechanisms of industry.

Il coyote

But even in such a dark, apocalyptic setting, flashes of light manage to filter through. At least in the dreamlike, fairy-tale digressions of this splendid "Il Coyote". Almost a moral fable, with fantasy triumphing over reason and common morality ("se la stella con la coda tante storie raccontava, la fantasia del coyote col suo fuoco la bruciava"). Marked by flashes of lyrical genius and touches of symphonic prog, "Il giorno aveva cinque teste" is the dress rehearsal that lays the groundwork for this incredibly ambitious three-act work, destined to turn Italian song on its head, recounting the alienation of a post-agrarian country, industrialized yet already in deep (moral) crisis.

Pezzo zero

In the first chapter of the partnership with Roversi, another highlight is the only track composed by Dalla alone: this brilliant instrumental titled "Pezzo zero" is – paradoxically – a showcase for Lucio the singer, who indulges in his trademark scat vocalizing, in a disorienting jumble of phonemes where the words, thus broken apart, lose all meaning according to traditional linguistic codes, yet gain an instinctive musicality, almost symbolizing a return to a primitivism that strips humanity of its conventions. This too is politics.

La borsa valori

The second chapter of the trilogy was originally meant to be titled "L'anno è un fuoco", to tell – in Roversi's own words – of "the violence of the world", which "is not just war, the scream of the cities, the knife ready in the hand, the shape of the shadow; but it is our violence, our youth, our loneliness". In the end, though, they opt for a change of title, choosing instead that of a track that plunges back into the most alienating dimension of industrial society: "Sulphur Dioxide", that is, the toxic cloud that makes the cities "barely visible", in a hazy, robotic world. But there's no room for hollow ideological rhetoric: the language remains ironic, irreverent, right up to the nonsensical rant of stock-market names delivered in Lucio's irresistible scat, inspired by a similar composition by the anarchist Franco Nebbia, "Borsa cha cha cha" (complete with a funk backing track and string-orchestra quotes of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" by Burt Bacharach and "Singin' in the Rain"). “Vendo le Bastogi/ compro Comit o Ras/ vendo Richard Ginori/ compro Buton e Sip Coge do via in un amen/ compro Sifa e Fisac/ butto la Snia Viscosa/ prendo Smeriglio e CIR”. Pure, unadulterated genius.

Ulysses Covered in Salt

The hermeticism of the first chapter resurfaces in the verses of this majestic "Ulisse coperto di sale", where the retelling of the warrior myth of the Odyssey becomes the springboard for a reflection on the theme of eternal return, in which, however, "everything has vanished, everything has changed": “Una mano di calce bianca/ Sulle pareti della mia stanza/ Cielo giallo di garbino/ Occhio caldo di bambino/ Tiro il sole fin dentro la stanza/ Carro di fuoco che corre sul cuore/ Perché ogni giorno è sabbia e furore/ E sempre uguali non sono le ore”. A lyric that—punctuated by solemn orchestral arrangements and sharp rhythm changes—leaves behind a feeling of desolation and bitterness.

Carmen Colon

Among the precious grooves of "Sulphur Dioxide" also lurks this brutal story of violence against a minor. A song that has become something of a small cult among Dalla's fans, especially in recent times. At its centre lies the terrible 1971 Churchville case, which involved a 10-year-old girl, victim of the so-called "Alphabet killer", the serial murderer who chose victims whose surname shared the same initial as their first name. The smooth country musicality of the arrangement and Dalla's intense vibrato accompany the harrowing description of the girl's final moments, with the hammering anaphora "Carmen Colon" repeated obsessively, conveying the full weight of grief caused by such an early and violent death. Roversi imagines the little gypsy girl abandoned like refuse on the roadside (her body was found in a canal near Interstate 490), ignored by the cars speeding towards the sea, only to later be exploited by the media to trigger a wave of collective outrage: “Questa ragazzina e la morte/ commuovono la tivù…/ è la vittima ventesima/ fra i bidoni viola dell’agosto/ il suo corpo sotto un lenzuolo è nascosto…/ nessuno per lei si è fermato/ né un aiuto o una mano le hanno dato/ filavano via verso il mare”. Roversi was even summoned to Rome by Interpol for questioning about the events, since some details in the song were said to have been withheld from the public by investigators. But the poet solved the mystery by showing the investigators the newspaper clippings on which he had based the lyrics.

Interview con l’Avvocato

One of the most brilliant and surreal episodes in Lucio Dalla's entire career is this irreverent "Interview con l’Avvocato", which opens "Automobiles", the third chapter of the trilogy. If, for Dalla and Roversi, the future of industrial society is an immense black hole in which every question goes unanswered, then the news media too can only produce empty chatter. Hence this surreal "interview", in which Gianni Agnelli explains the future of the car industry to a reporter from the Manchester Guardian. Dalla, accompanying himself on piano with a deflating, tongue-in-cheek gait, delivers it in a peerless cabaret turn: he has the head of Fiat recite a comic pseudo-English grammelot, sings in scat, and pulls off a wild vocal "solo", closing with a question that is really meant as a bleak prophecy: “L’auto non ha futuro/ Stecco di legno sull’onda/ Dopo l’assestamento/ Le auto saranno più rare/ E finiranno per scomparire/ Come lampare sul mare”. Things wouldn't unfold exactly like that, but in 1976 no one in Italy could have got away with such mockery of one of the country's most powerful men. Too uncomfortable and explosive for its time, even after being stripped of some even harsher lines by Roversi, "Interview with the Lawyer" would be censored by the media and condemned to early obscurity. Yet its biting insolence remains just as relevant today, in an Italy where economic powers are no less privileged or unpunished.

Mille Miglia – Part One and Two

"Automobiles" marks the end of the Dalla-Roversi partnership, right from its inception: all because of a censorship dispute that came between the theatrical show "Il futuro dell'automobile" (also broadcast by Rai in 6 episodes) and its transposition onto record, stripped of its 5 most political songs. Faced with RCA's intransigence, Dalla is forced to capitulate, and Roversi never forgives him: he refuses to let his name appear on the record, hiding disdainfully behind the pseudonym Norisso (an 18th-century count from Verona). What remains, however, is the beauty of his verses, which enrich this legendary narration of the "Mille Miglia". Introduced by Tony Esposito's tarantella-like percussion, the first part of the suite delves into the ruins of rural Italy devastated by the Great War, in an epic of "splashes of oil and bursts of earth": “Poi il sole si spaccava contro il ferro dei gasometri/ E dall’alto lasciava una riga rossa di sangue/ Sulla strada per chilometri, mentre sul prato italiano/ C’era la morte secca che falciava il grano… Sbuffi di polvere, zaffate d’olio/ Puzzo di benzina per le strade di un’Italy contadina”. The image of the reaper cutting down wheat alludes both to the blood shed by farm labourers in the uprisings of the early twentieth century and to the sacrifice of drivers willing to risk their lives on the track. In the final climax of "Mille Miglia del '47", despite the euphoric refrain ("Nuvola, Nuvolari, sei una nuvola nera!"), lit up by a Bixio-style charleston, even the description of the race grows darker, revealing an Italy with a "devoured heart". And as "Biondetti, filthy as a dog" crosses the finish line first, Roversi once again magnifies "the rubble of war", closing this extraordinary automotive epic on a fittingly epic note.

L'ingorgo

After the epic of the past, the present appears as a gigantic "Traffic Jam" with "a hundred thousand cars gridlocked", in which "for twelve hours no one has moved". A collective hallucination built through a succession of panels, using a technique that would later serve Dalla well on "L'ultima luna" three years on. A track that starts quietly, with the voice distorted by echo and solemn organ chords, before gradually building momentum to the puffing rhythm of the synths. Inspired by a real news story, "L'ingorgo" recounts the dramatic situation that arose on a French motorway near Paris following one of the first major road-network collapses, highlighting mankind's sense of alienation, a prisoner of his own invention. A sense of inhumanity broken by one of those illuminating details that Dalla, throughout his future career as a songwriter, would always handle with mastery: "At nine a stranger arrives/And asks the people around him for bread". As if all that remained for a man trapped in the heat and that hell of sheet metal were a few scraps of ordinary daily life: “A mezzogiorno si sbriciola un biscotto/ L’ingegnere dorme nella Taurus/ Un muso di cane contro il vetro rotto”, “Dividono sul bordo della strada/ L’ultimo cracker, l’ultima bottiglia/ La Coca-Cola è razionata a gocce/ Due gocce solo per le labbra rotte”, until “Verso sera qualcosa si muove/ Con uno strappo la fila si snoda/ Come un gatto che si morde la coda/ Le macchine procedono in pariglia”. The musical setting, too, is perfect: each phase of the story is marked by a melodic motif that heightens its particular mood, first echoing the drivers' exhaustion with a languid arrangement, then their sense of euphoria and release in the more rhythmic, driving theme of the finale.

Il cucciolo Alfredo

Tempered by the exhilarating—and troubled—experience with Roversi ("If I hadn't met him, I'd be a plumber now," he would later confess), Dalla is finally ready to write his own songs by himself. And the debut couldn't be more auspicious. Among the grooves of the splendid "How Deep Is the Sea"—as Fabio Russo writes in OndaRock's milestone review—"Dalla is navigator and survivor amid a sea as ablaze as fire. He is Ulysses, singing with poetic tension of the strength of love and the courage found in despair, journeying through human history, caught between memory and the irrational, startled and hallucinating. A story of injustice and inequality, of murderers and the oppressed, of small, stubborn giants who live by their own spirit and strength of will." With lyrics that are "accessible and open, funny and anomalous, moments of awareness delivered in streams of consciousness that mirror a restless, complex and paradoxical world. Licence to rave for real." Like those in this poignant portrait of "Il cucciolo Alfredo", with its vibrant fragments of urban humanity, playing on melodic and harmonic balancing acts between strings and Fender keyboards left softly in the foreground, amid sobs, suspensions and breaths of air. A simply wonderful song.

Corso Buenos Aires

One of the most disorienting moments on "How Deep Is the Sea" is this pop saraband set amid a vivid "live" news report; a swarming heap of characters, instrumental passages—Dalla's electric piano, drums and guitars—linguistic tricks, and inventions such as scat (a kind of fictional language mimicking instruments, murmurs, voices). Thus the elegant Milanese avenue linking Piazzale Loreto to Porta Venezia becomes the stage for social contradictions—the shopping of the rich and the poverty on the pavement—and for unbridled hallucinations in this frenzied scat-blues. The wanted man turns into a true demon amid the excited, word-of-mouth witness accounts: "I saw him up close, his eyes were like two spits, his face was yellow, the face of a murderer." Others already have their verdict ready: "He must be some Slav who sleeps and steals at the station, those lightless eyes, he's definitely a scoundrel: let's call a copper, I just saw the murderer bothering a child." Even though it's unlikely a Milanese would call a policeman "pulismano"—a distinctly Bolognese term—that "murderer" is in fact nothing more than a homeless man with his son, seeking alms, forced to flee that avenue and that "inhospitable" city.

Milan

Speaking of “Milan”, although it's a song that has gained considerable notoriety over time, our selection can't overlook the magnificent ode the Bolognese singer-songwriter dedicated to it on his 1979 masterpiece “Lucio Dalla”, generally remembered for its best-known hits (from “L’anno che verrà” to “Anna e Marco”). A magnificent portrait of the northern metropolis suspended between modernity and nostalgia, noble traditions – footballing ones included – and dehumanizing progress. Yet another sequence of extraordinarily incisive images: “Milan vicino all’Europa/ Milano che banche che cambi/… Milano che quando piange/ piange davvero/… poi Milan e Benfica/ Milano che fatica/… Milano sguardo maligno di Dio/ zucchero e catrame”. It's a toss-up between this and “Luci a San Siro” for the title of most beautiful song ever written about Milan (written, what's more, by a non-Milanese). Dalla's lyricism is pure sidewalk poetry, as visceral and direct as it is disarming and visionary. A “fairy-tale realism” steeped in melancholy, a blend of tenderness and alienation in which a twist or a witty remark often arrives to defuse the drama, through that “technique of distraction” so dear to Chekhov too. And the music, dreamy and rich with precious melodic veins, is certainly no less remarkable.

La Signora

On “Lucio Dalla” (1979) every piece is equally essential to a mosaic in which each tile sits exactly where it should. Take, for instance, the most cryptic episode of the bunch, “La signora”, musically understated but lyrically biting in its portrait of power and its many guises (“La Signora è una fila di macchine da qui fino al mare/ la Signora ci stampa il giornale e ce lo fa comperare/ La Signora ha tanti nomi, tanti nomi/ così da nascondersi e non farsi trovare/ ma a volte si veste di luci e bandiere per farsi notare”), yet also an ambiguous fable of bourgeois frustrations (“La Signora è in lacrime, e si ferma ad ascoltare/ attraversa e si blocca a metà della strada/ un colpo di vento la fa continuare”). Marco Nanni's relentless bass underpins Dalla's vocals, which spill over into his classic soul vocalizing.

Tango

On a record full of moving episodes like the 1979 masterpiece, one of the most intense songs of all risks going unnoticed. Incredibly poetic and heart-wrenching, “Tango” opens with strings arranged by Reverberi and Gianni Ziglioli's accordion, and closes with a killer quatrain: “Morena è lontana e aspetta/ suona il suo violino ed è felice/ nel sole è ancora più bella e non ha fretta/ e sabato è domani”. An abyss of radiant melancholy. In between, a story of dances, feelings and assorted humanity, condensed into a collage of lines capable of “joining heaven and earth”. For instance: “Ho viaggiato cento notti per arrivar di giorno/ Ho letto libri antichi preoccupanti/ Poi arrivati a Torino ci siam commossi in tanti/ Per quel tango ballato da un bambino”. It's precisely in the most intimate, secluded episodes that Dalla reveals that fluency of writing, that ability to capture the definitive image in a handful of lines, which would remain – at least until the start of the following decade – his greatest weapon.

Il parco della Luna

Starting with the 1979 LP, Dalla deepens his relationship with rock, bolstered also by his partnership with Stadio, who also backed him live. Ricky Portera 's electric guitar bursts forcefully into the Bolognese singer-songwriter's sound, who up to that point had preferred to tread other paths, almost as if to underline his jazz background compared with his folk-oriented peers. That relationship develops further on the third consecutive masterpiece of his golden period, “Dalla” (1980), and in particular on this track, embellished with guitar riffs and a final solo: a dreamlike journey of melancholy and loneliness “halfway between Ferrara and the moon”, starring two unforgettable characters, Sonni Boy and his girl Fortuna. A highly cinematic song, which Pietro Marcello, not by chance, put to particular use in his beautiful film about Dalla, “For Lucio”.

Mambo

Among the more eccentric episodes of the aforementioned “Dalla” (1980) is also this dazed little sketch, which lights up the tragicomic end of a love affair with flashes of surreal irony (“Sono andato al cinema e mi han mandato via/ Perché piangevo forte e mangiavo la sua fotografia”… “Se ne è andata sbattendo la porta, e avevo in mezzo la mano”). Almost a Disperato erotico stomp part 2, only it ends worse, with that curse hurled at the beloved “queen of the mambo” once it's all over and he's left alone, “with his heart in the cellar” (“Vattene via/ Leva il tuo sorriso dalla strada/ E fai passare la mia malinconia”). A driving rhythm, the usual anthology-worthy vocal performance and a final mocking, melancholy sax solo frame one of the album's most underrated gems.

Meri Luis

The same fate befalls another track on the album, the ineffable “Meri Luis”, which the Bolognese singer-songwriter himself considered “the truest and most sincere song I've ever written”. In a series of dazzling flashes, we follow the stories of six characters (the director, the boy, the dentist, the taxi driver, the girl, the star) “hurled into the middle of traffic”, a metaphor for vital chaos. And it's precisely then that they become aware of the grey monotony of their existences, developing the need to break the routine, but each in their own way: a recurring concept in Dalla, from “L’anno che verrà” (“e si farà l’amore, ognuno come gli va”) to its natural follow-up “Telefonami tra vent’anni” (“ognuno con i suoi mezzi, magari arrivando a pezzi”). And so the director, “tired of waiting, as soon as he saw the star he told her to get lost”, the boy “left his job behind and, catching a train, ran all the way to the sea”, the dentist “fell in love with a tooth, he strokes it, he doesn't want to hurt it”, the taxi driver “doesn't have a fare in his car but a fishing rod to go casting”. And finally, she, Meri Luis, has at last let herself go, raising a blessing to the sky “as if it were a brother” for “her lovely breasts” and for “the friend who wants to touch them”. A hymn to freedom, born from a real-life spark. Because “Meri Luis” really existed: she was a shy girl waiting for the bus to Treviso, as composer and Dalla's friend Lucio Francescon revealed to Il Foglio: “We were cycling along the bank of the Piave that runs from Nervesa della Battaglia to the Priula bridge, when I see this curvaceous girl, and I nearly fall off the bank, and I drag Lucio along too. He stops, squints, and with an astonished expression tells me: ‘I've never seen breasts that beautiful’. He suggested going over to touch them to see if they were real! And he would have gone through with it if I hadn't stopped him, telling him we weren't in Bologna where anything goes, we were in Veneto, and there was a real risk of getting a shovel to the head from her father or brother”. So, Francescon recalls, “every now and then Lucio would think back to that vision, and I was amazed because I'd never seen him so interested in a woman. He'd built up a whole story around her life in his head, a tale of shyness and inadequacy, of an overprotective father and a brother who was worse than the father. He told me he'd put her in a song. I thought he was pulling my leg. Instead, three years later he sent me the record, complete with a dedication”. And indeed, “life is so beautiful, and how wonderful it is to be able to sing about it”.

Madonna disperazione

Another cornerstone among the non-hits. One of the hidden gems par excellence of Dalla's catalogue found a home on “Q-Disc”, the mini-album released in 1981, after the huge success of “Dalla”, and it seems almost like its natural continuation, so much so that one might suspect it dates from the same sessions. “Madonna disperazione” is a journey, lysergic in its own way, visionary without a doubt, with vocals delivered as a torrential stream of consciousness, probably recorded in a single take. It opens with an indefinable noise, like (synth) drops falling into the void, creating disorientation; then the entry of two acoustic guitars and keyboards that keep dictating the rhythm; then the characteristic scat intro, and off we go. It almost feels like an improvised jam with elements that grow gradually more defined – electric guitars, waves of piano and keyboards, but above all sax phrases that solidify, coming to punctuate the whole track. The narrative is almost like blurred, nocturnal jazz, unfolding between the muffled atmospheres of the keyboards and the scratches of the sax. And it's another monster performance from Lucio the interpreter, who “tears a song apart with his mouth”, streaking it with blues and interspersing phonemes as rhythmic devices to only slightly ease a tension that remains constant, almost paranoid (“C’è Madonna disperazione che anche al buio ti vede e ti sente”). With lyrics built once again on dreamlike flashes, with loneliness as the common thread: she, in all likelihood, is our Madonna disperazione, who bears some distant kinship with “La signora”, the one who “goes to the cinema alone, but is afraid to go in”. Eight minutes of brilliant songwriting, unjustly underrated.

1983

And unjustly underrated is certainly also the album with which Dalla marks 1983, which inevitably pays the price for coming out after that trio of masterpieces (“How Deep Is the Sea”, “Lucio Dalla”, “Dalla”), rounded out by the brilliant “Q-Disc”. Eclectic, experimental, charmingly imperfect, “1983” is capped off by the sprawling title track, in which, over nearly six minutes, Dalla surveys forty years of Italian history, poised between autobiography and collective memory, with flourishes from small jazz combos (his origins resurfacing) and, as usual, ironically surreal lines (“Si mangiava coi cani, non ti ricordi a Bologna che festa, quando arrivarono gli americani”… “Ma dopo due anni, tutti quanti perfino i fascisti, aspettavano gli americani, come a Riccione aspettano i turisti”). Perhaps a touch long-winded, but still sharp and disarming, “1983” suffers from a sound that's certainly less immediate and engaging than its successful predecessors, but still shows Dalla in fine form, eager to push beyond the boundaries of his songwriting and step outside his comfort zone.

Noi come voi

More immediate, with its driving rhythm and ever-sharp lyrics, “Noi come voi” is perhaps the track on “1983” that comes closest to his earlier hits. This is a “positive” Lucio, professing his faith in humanity despite all differences and divisions (on one side “us”, on the other “you”), readily set aside in the face of the miracle of a smile (“Ma cosa possiamo, noi come voi, davanti al sorriso/ Davanti a due occhi, due fuochi, due gocce, stelle del paradiso”). With a hybrid sound, poised between the synth-pop temptations of the Eighties and the rock songwriting that Dalla, with Stadio, had honed on his previous records.

Viaggi organizzati

The Eighties, with the arrival of synthetic sounds and technological innovations, pushed many artists to reinvent themselves, changing their style. Lucio Dalla took up the challenge with the help of producer and arranger Mauro Malavasi, who would go on to assist him on several later works too. The first fruit of this new partnership is the 1984 album that takes its title from this very track. A record that scales back the rock edges in favour of electronics bordering on dance music, sublimated in the celebrated (and inspired) “Washington”. In the title track, however, Lucio experiments with electronics, complete with an intro that recalls Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman”, and synth flourishes punctuating the song. His impassioned vocal, though, brings back the melodic tradition of his songwriting, even if it lacks a truly incisive chorus to match.

Chissà se lo sai

A year later, however, the new album “Bugie” reverses course, returning above all to the melodic song format, to a more classic style of songwriting, sealed by the success of the single “Se io fossi un angelo”. The real gem, though, is this heart-wrenching ballad, placed sixth in the tracklist and written together with his friend Ron. A simple, poignant song that finds Lucio sinking into one of his boundless depths of tenderness. With a supremely calibrated, soft arrangement that, with the barest of embellishments, serves one of the finest love songs in his catalogue, a worthy heir to the legendary “Cara” from 1980. “And then the night with its steady silence, that silence which sometimes feels like death, gives me the courage to speak, and to tell you calmly, to tell you at last, that I love you. Così adesso lo sai”.

Le rondini

With the Nineties came the irreversible decline of Lucio Dalla, still punctuated here and there, however, by flashes of pure class. Take, for instance, this track included on the 1990 album “Cambio”, the one carried to success by the pop single “Attenti al lupo”. A small poem, written with Malavasi, in which Dalla imagines the point of view of a swallow slipping into the world of humans to observe them with wonder, pondering the very meaning of life, seeking happiness in its modest, limited dimension, made of restraint and sobriety, made of “entrare dentro i fili di una radio, volare sopra i tetti delle città, incontrare le espressioni dialettali, mescolarsi con l’odore del caffè, fermarsi sul naso dei vecchi mentre leggono i giornali e con la polvere dei sogni volare al fresco delle stelle, anche più in là”. With a choir – admittedly a touch overbearing – providing counterpoint to Dalla’s idyllic narrative, and horn and electric guitar flourishes beefing up the sound. “Le rondini” would sadly resurface on the day of the Bologna songwriter’s funeral, when his friend Marco Alemanno read it during the ceremony in his memory, in one of the most moving moments of that day, when all of Bologna gathered around their beloved Lucio for a final farewell.

Henna

Having gone largely unnoticed at the time, “Henna” (1994) is today one of the most reappraised albums in Dalla’s discography. A work in which the Emilian artist shows flashes of rediscovering the irreverent vitality of his golden years (for instance, with the amusing gag of “Merdman”, which once again tells a story of marginalisation through the tale of an alien who ends up on a talk show), and where he also returns to experimenting further on the sound front, as in this mystically-tinged title track: a secular prayer for a war that had woken him one night while he was out on a boat. “Henna” indeed recalls that turbulent night and the Bologna songwriter’s sense of powerlessness in the face of the war in the Balkans, with the roar of planes heading off to bomb the former Yugoslavia. A song that thus remains tragically topical, as war rages once again, more fiercely than ever, in the heart of Europe.

Tu non mi basti mai

We close our survey with this 1996 piece, included on the album “Canzoni”. With touching lyrics that, in a few humble words, capture the deepest meaning of love: the wish for it to last forever: “I'd like to be the dress you'll wear… the lipstick you'll use… the shower water you run… the sheets of the bed where you'll sleep”… And even “the grave when you die”. Curiously, the song would go on to become a fetish of TikTok’s Gen Z, thanks to numerous creators on the platform who used it in their content, turning it into a full-blown trend. Contemporary paradoxes that Lucio would probably have goggled at, muttering one of his sharp quips. And it’s for this too, dear Lucio, that you are never enough for us.

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22/02/2026